


Little Boy Who Lives Down The Lane

by The_Cimmerians



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:17:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4047535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Cimmerians/pseuds/The_Cimmerians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: AU. The Klaine version of a dark fairytale. This story contains character death, pederasty, violence, and a deep streak of human nastiness. Do not read if these things upset you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Boy Who Lives Down The Lane

Belying its name, the Pacific Ocean on the stretch of Northern California coast known as Black Rock Bay is rough and rageful, clawing and crashing on the stone cliffs above with a low, roiling snarl that never ends. The slender strip of beach between the ocean and the cliffs is bleak, inhospitable, and entirely transitory, appearing only briefly at each low tide. The sand the tide exposes is coarse and dun-colored and always wet, a thin skin easily scraped away to expose the abrasive rock beneath.

From the cliff top, the ocean appears quite black—a combined effect of the dark, igneous rock beneath the water, and the gunmetal-gray sky above. Past the black crust clinging to the coast the water is no more welcoming, home to ferocious rip currents and undertows. People have been lost, here; lost and never found again.

It is not the kind of California beach the tourists throng to. But the small town perched on the cliffs above often takes a quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) pride in that. Let the tourists pass them by, let them chase the sunshine with their RVs and fat wallets and endless, noisy demands for cheap, imported souvenirs and overpriced sunscreen—that’s never been a part of Black Rock Bay life, and it never will be.

The houses press close together towards the center of town, but at the edges they become larger, grander, and far more scattered—isolated, you could say, if you wished to ascribe misanthropic intent to the original land-owners and builders, rather than the noblesse oblige of country retirement. The houses are old and graciously weathered, wood polished to a silky sheen by salt air, time, and benign neglect. The oldest are surrounded with silver waves of hissing grasses and a few gnarled orchard trees, perched near the cliff edge with windows turned to the endless gray and black of sky, sea, and stone, withstanding the constant wind as if they’d done it for a hundred years, and fully expect to do it for several hundred more.

It is in one of these houses, far from the center of town and somehow elegant in its solitude, with warm, amber light spilling from the lower floor windows and a curl of smoke rising from the chimney, that this story begins, with bells, first one and then another.

***

The doorbell chimed one second before the oven timer went off, a conflict of courtesy and precision cookery. “Coming—one minute, please!” Kurt Hummel called, because soufflé waited for no man, and it was only a few seconds before he had the soufflé out and—perfect, it was perfectly browned and risen to the right height, finally, he’d done it.

The man on the other side of the screen when he pulled the front door open was vaguely familiar—middle-aged, blond and florid, with ruddy, almost-cherubic cheeks that didn’t seem to go with his thinning hair and the bruised-looking pouches below his eyes.

“Hi,” the man said brightly, pulling the screen door open and stepping inside without being asked, and Kurt stepped back more out of astonishment than anything else. “I’m Lyle Halleck. Your dad rented this place from my mother, this is one of her houses—I was at the office when he signed the paperwork, you probably don’t remember me.”

“I remember.” He did, now, although he’d had no idea that the red-faced guy staring at him was Mrs. Halleck’s son.

“I saw you guys move in; you’re Kurt, right?”

“Yes. Mr. Halleck—”

“Oh, call me Lyle,” Lyle said, looking around. “Is your father home?”

Kurt looked down, brushing flour off his apron, then he untied it and took it off. “Yes—but he’s working. Not to be disturbed.”

“He’s close by, then?”

Kurt draped the apron over his folded arms. “Just in his study—but he’s not to be disturbed. But I’d be glad to tell him you came by, Mr. Halleck—”

“Lyle, I told you,” Lyle told him, grinning. “And there’s no need to tell him—we can just talk, you and I, just the two of us.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you come to see my father?”

“No, actually—I’m the advance scout; my daughters—they’re trick-or-treating.”

Trick or treating—Halloween. He’d actually forgotten. “Oh. Where are—”

“They’ll be along shortly,” Lyle said, one thumb jerking back over his shoulder. “They had a kind of haunted-house thing over at the Rios place, down at the end of the road—the girls are loving it, my little fairy princesses, they’ll be along in a minute or two.”

“Oh.” Kurt turned, heading towards the kitchen. He raised his voice accordingly. “Well, I’m terribly sorry, but things have been so busy lately that I—I’m afraid my father forgot to get any Halloween candy.”

“Guess it’ll have to be a ‘trick’ for you, then,” Lyle said softly, and the guy was right behind him, for a big guy he’d moved silently, absolutely silently, and Kurt’s heart lurched in his chest when he turned around, his back now pressed to the counter.

“Mr. Halleck—”

“Lyle, I told you, Lyle. How old are you, Kurt?”

“I’m fourteen.” He said it calmly, frankly. Firmly. “I’m fourteen, and my father is in the next room—”

“Fourteen,” Lyle echoed, as if reminiscing. “Old enough to have a girlfriend. Do you have a girlfriend, Kurt?”

“No,” Kurt said, and Lyle seemed to be leaning closer to him so Kurt took the opportunity to duck away from the counter, using a tea towel to pick up the hot soufflé, holding it firmly in front of him. “Maybe… I don’t have any candy, but I could give your girls some soufflé to take home. It’s chocolate raspberry.”

Lyle eyed the soufflé as if he found it highly amusing. “You made that yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Well aren’t you a little domestic angel,” Lyle drawled. “Guess you don’t need a girlfriend after all.”

All the hair on the back of Kurt’s neck was standing on end, but he forced himself to move slowly, calmly, setting the soufflé down and getting two small Tupperware containers out of the cupboard. He collected his shaker container of confectioner’s sugar, gave a smooth stir to the raspberry hard sauce on the stovetop, and got a large spoon to portion the soufflé—“I know it’s not a standard Halloween treat, but—” he cut off with a gasp, turning around and pulling away from the large, hot hand that had run from his thigh up to his ass, squeezing almost painfully hard.

“Just a Halloween trick,” Lyle said, holding both hands up beside his face, which was flushed red and damp. “Just a fun little game, Kurt, a Halloween game, so don’t get upset, it’s just—”

Kurt tried to swallow past the lump of revulsion and panic in his throat. “Mr. Halleck—”

“Daddy!” A chorus outside his screen door, two little girls, a purple fairy princess and a pink fairy princess, and Lyle immediately took a step backwards, away from him.

“I’m coming in just a minute, sweet peas,” Lyle called over his shoulder, never breaking eye contact with Kurt. “My friend Kurt here is making a super-special treat, just for you.”

Kurt hung suspended for a moment, blinking, then whirled and made two small to-go soufflé portions. “No need to return the containers,” he said coldly, offering them to Lyle. “I won’t need them back.”

“Oh, but keeping them wouldn’t be… well, it wouldn’t be neighborly, now, would it?” Lyle said softly, smiling. “After all, you’re the new folks in town—got to make sure you know how glad we are that you’re here.”

Kurt stared at him until he left, until the front door clicked softly closed, then he dropped the spoon he was holding and moved fast, quickly and smoothly across the kitchen, then the living room, to lock and bolt the front door.

Then he circled the house, closing all the curtains as he went.

***

The next day he was outside, sweeping the porch, when a car turned down the long drive that led from the main road to the house. A police cruiser. Kurt kept sweeping.

The woman who climbed out of the car was tall and strong-looking, with black, curly hair pulled back into a ponytail and wide, bright brown eyes. She didn’t look particularly unfriendly. She also didn’t look stupid. “Hi there.”

Kurt rested his broom against a corner of the porch, dusting off his hands as he turned. “Good morning, Officer.”

She stepped up on the porch, and although her face seemed kind her eyes were everywhere all at once, bright and acquisitive and looking very much like they weren’t missing a thing. “Hi—you must be the son… Kurt, right? Tess Thibodeau,” she said, offering a hand. Kurt could feel a ridge of callus on her palm.

Kurt nodded. “I’m Kurt, yes. But I’m sorry, my father is lying down at the moment; I’m afraid he can’t be disturbed—”

“Oh, no problem,” she said lightly, her eyes darting over his shoulder and through the screen door. “I understand—my dad’s a bear if you wake him from a nap before he’s ready. Same with yours?”

“More or less,” Kurt said, scratching his neck with one finger. There was a silence. Kurt cleared his throat. “I was just about to have some iced tea—would you care to join me, Officer Thibodeau?”

She walked around the room while he prepared the tea, looking at everything. She paused at the mantel, gently touching the spines of the books arranged there. “Your dad’s a writer, right?”

“He is now,” Kurt said brusquely, slicing lemons. “Before that, he was a mechanic.”

Even from across the room, her eyes were shrewdly bright. “Unusual career path.”

“He’s an unusual man.” Kurt shrugged, reaching for a crockery jar on the shelf. “Madeleines?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Cookies. I made them myself. Would you like some?”

The look on her face was either amusement or annoyance; he didn’t know her well enough to tell for sure. “How old are you?”

“I’ll be fifteen next week.”

She nodded, and when she walked towards him she was smiling. Amusement, then. “Well, sure,” she said, nodding at the cookie jar. “You like to cook?”

“I’m learning to cook,” he said, moving everything to a serving tray. “And yes, I like it.”

“Is your dad teaching you?”

Kurt smiled softly, transferring the tray to the kitchen table. “My dad… could burn water using only the power of his mind, so no—I’m teaching myself.”

“Your mom’s—”

“Gone.” He set out the tea. “She took off when I was six.”

“That’s tough,” Officer Thibodeau said. Her eyebrows went up when she bit into a cookie. “But… wow, that’s her loss—these are amazing.”

“Thanks.” A quiet pause, and Kurt kept his attention on his own plate and glass: lemon and one sugar in his tea, the ice tinkling brightly as he stirred. He could feel her speculative gaze, not suspicious, not hostile, just… curious. He sipped his tea slowly.

“You’re home-schooled, right?” She asked finally, reaching for another cookie.

Kurt nodded. “Yes. My dad decided, two years ago, when… I started having a hard time in school, it was for the best…”

“Bullies?”

Kurt looked at her sharply, but saw no judgment. Just understanding. “Yes.”

“I get it.” She took a sip of tea and then set her glass down, swirling it a little. “So it’s just you and your dad.”

“Yes.”

“And he teaches you, or you learn on your own.”

“Yes.”

She tilted her head, leaning it on her hand. “Don’t you get lonely?”

Kurt folded his napkin carefully. “You know, I really don’t.”

Another speculative look, and he wondered if she believed him. She put her glass aside and rested both elbows on the table, leaning towards him. “You know, Kurt, last night I got called out to a fender-bender—right out on the main road, right past this place.”

Kurt folded his arms. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” She looked out the window, then back at him. “I was in a hurry and couldn’t stop, but it looked to me like Lyle Halleck’s Escalade was parked out front.”

Kurt blinked. “It was. He was taking his girls trick-or-treating. They stopped here.”

Her eyes were bright, right on him. “Uh huh. Was your dad home?”

“He was… my dad was working, but yeah, he was home.”

Her voice was softly casual, her palms flat on the table. “You know, maybe if Lyle comes by again when your dad’s not around, you might… it might be a good idea to ask him to come back later.”

Kurt used his napkin, refolded it, and draped it over his empty plate. “Is that so?”

Tess nodded, then took another cookie, still casual. “You know his mother owns this house.”

“Yes.”

“Owns most of the town, in fact.”

“Ah.”

She bit the cookie, chewing slowly. “Gives her a lot of pull. Maybe too much.”

Kurt touched his napkin lightly. “I see.”

Tess reached into the breast pocket of her uniform, and pulled out a card. “I put my cell number on here, Kurt—you can call me, any time, okay? I know your dad’s around most of the time, but I just… just hang on to it, okay? Just in case.”

“Just in case,” Kurt repeated, and accepted the card.

Tess pushed back from the table. “Tell your dad I’m sorry I missed him, okay?”

Kurt got to his feet. “Of course I will.”

He walked her outside, waved goodbye until she was out of sight, and then picked up his broom again.

***

Two days after making the acquaintance of Black Rock Bay’s finest, Kurt made the weekly trek from the house down the long, winding drive to the main road, to set out waste bins for collection. There were three bins: trash, recycling, and green waste, and he made three separate trips because the one time he’d tried to wheel two bins at once he’d wound up dumping an entire day’s worth of carefully-raked leaves all over his lawn. The wind off the cliffs was wild, cutting first one way then another with no lull between, making his nose run and his eyes water, and sending little whirling eddies of leaves and roadside debris to spin around his feet like the world’s smallest tornadoes. Natural disaster season in the ant kingdom, he thought.

A rock jammed into the wheel of the last bin about two-thirds of the way down the drive, so he dragged it the rest of the way. He had to lean it carefully against the post of the mailbox to work the rock out, crouching with his eyes squinted mostly shut against the wind, so he didn’t see or hear the boy on the bicycle until he got to his feet, tossing the rock overhand to the other side of the road. The boy was just suddenly there, wide-eyed and staring at him, rolling down the hill towards him, then past him, then headed away, his head craning almost comically over his shoulder with his mouth hanging open—and Kurt said something when the bike wobbled, some warning, something—only the little wobble became a big wobble, and then that was it. The bike heeled over and the boy went down in an abrupt, noisy tangle of arms and legs and spinning wheels, and Kurt was there before he knew he meant to move, kneeling on the broken yellow line that ran down the center of the road.

“Holy hell—are you okay?”

Both of them were staring down at the boy’s palms, raw and bleeding with bits of gravel embedded in the wounds.

“I’m fine,” the boy said in a voice that shook only a little, then said, “ow,” quietly as if to himself, and let his hands hang. He looked up at Kurt. “Uh, hi. I’m Blaine.”

“Kurt.” His usual effortless balance between courteous politeness and distance eluded him, shredded to tatters as if it were another casualty of the accident. “I have a first-aid kit—up at the house.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble—” spoken with the sober, if slightly shaky, air of a gentleman, something that seemed both automatic and ingrained, and the corner of Kurt’s mouth twitched as he got to his feet, hauling Blaine up by the forearm to avoid his bleeding hands.

“It’s the least I can do. Honestly, it’s just what I do for all the guys who wipe out at the foot of my driveway.”

Blaine was up, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, but whether that was from the accident or some other cause there was no way to tell. “Really? Are there a lot of them?”

“Dozens,” Kurt said smoothly, and he meant it just as a blithe witticism, not an intimacy, but somehow that’s what it became—he saw it in Blaine’s eyes when they met his own, a jolt of connection that was excruciatingly intense for just a moment, then gone.

Out of deference to Blaine’s bleeding hands Kurt dragged the bike upright and wheeled it up the drive, acknowledging Blaine’s thanks with just a nod. He parked the bike near the side of the house and then led the way up the porch steps. When he opened the front door to let Blaine through he felt (as he always did) a strong sensation of vulnerability—like taking off your clothes in front of somebody, was how he thought of it, this inviting people to step inside the place you worked and lived and planned and slept.

“Wow—this is beautiful,” Blaine said, looking around with his brown eyes wide, and Kurt had to actively resist a smile of pleasure. “Simple, but classic. You did it?”

“My dad was… busy,” Kurt said tersely, pointing Blaine towards a kitchen chair while he went to the pantry shelf that housed the first-aid kit. “I just did what I could to make it comfortable for both of us.”

“I was in here once before, back when Mrs. Halleck was still trying to rent the place. It was all glittery seashell decor and fake fishing nets.”

“And I didn’t throw away a single piece of precious, cottage-by-the-sea kitsch, much as I wanted to,” Kurt replied as he sat down at the table. “It’s all down in the cellar, an unseen shrine to Mrs. Halleck’s remarkable design sensibilities.” He frowned down at Blaine’s outstretched hands. “There’s a lot of gravel. This is probably going to hurt.”

“You don’t have to… I mean, I can do it—”

“Oh, just be quiet, Blaine. Bite your lip and pretend to be a stoic.”

Blaine’s answering smile was both hesitant and shy, but brilliant. “How do you know I’m not?”

“Stoics don’t wear bow ties. It’s a rule.”

Blaine’s smile didn’t budge, despite the fact that Kurt was tweezing pieces of rock out of his palms with quick, precise movements. “I see.” There was a brief pause, not an entirely uncomfortable one. “You know all about it, I guess.”

“Of course I do.” A quiet sniff. “Hold still. More still than that. Better.”

Blaine tilted his head. “You know, you’re kind of pushy for a kid who’s just… how old are you, anyway?”

Kurt glanced up briefly. “I’ll be fifteen next week.”

“Oh.” Blaine shifted in his chair. “You seem older.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

Kurt’s lips twitched. “You seem younger.”

He’d thought for sure that would do it, would finally cross the line from ‘witty banter’ into ‘provocation’, but Blaine just laughed. “It’s part of the whole air of mystery I’m cultivating.”

Kurt put down the tweezers and picked up the antiseptic, arching an eyebrow. “You’re cultivating an air of mystery?”

Blaine shrugged, still smiling. “Well, I just started.”

Kurt tried not to laugh. He really did.

***

Kurt had just applied the last strip of tape to Blaine’s now-clean, disinfected, neatly-bandaged hands when Blaine said quickly, almost as if it were a confession: “I love your dad’s books.”

“Oh?” Kurt pulled back, packing the equipment and supplies carefully back into the kit, his eyes firmly lowered. “I’m sorry you missed him—he’s away on business. But I’ll let him know he’s got a fan in town.”

“I didn’t mean—I would never want to bother him, of course. I just… I don’t usually like detective novels, but I like his. They’re… um. I can relate to them, somehow.”

Kurt pressed his lips together for a moment. “You relate to books about a homespun, small-town Iowa mechanic who half-unwittingly sleuths out solutions to the mysterious violent deaths that somehow keep happening around him?” Kurt tried and failed to keep amusement out of his voice. “Something about the town I should know?”

Blaine smiled. “Oh, well, not really.” He shrugged. It was an unfairly appealing and self-effacing shrug. “But the moment there are violent deaths, I’m going to solve them.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“Just biding your time?”

“Vigilant and undaunted.”

Their gazes locked again, both of them smiling this time, and Blaine was the first to look away, his cheeks pink. He looked at his bandaged hands instead. “Kurt… thank you. You did a great job.”

“I just hope they don’t get infected.” He sounded prim, even to his own ears. Cool. Reserved. It was a relief. Sort of. “Tea.”

Blaine’s head tilted. “I’m sorry?”

Kurt cleared his throat. His mouth had made the offer without a go-ahead from his brain. “Tea, or… or coffee? Would you like some?”

Blaine’s shoulders lowered, just a fraction of an inch. “I would love some.”

***

Blaine was a Black Rock Bay native, apparently with family roots in the town that went back generations. It turned out that Kurt had already met at least one of Blaine’s relatives: his aunt, the disingenuous and affable Officer Thibodeau. That coincidence put the hair up on the back of Kurt’s neck for a few minutes, but the boy keeping a careful distance at the other end of the sofa—sipping his coffee with clumsy bandaged hands and calm, rosy-cheeked composure—seemed like the world’s worst candidate for clandestine reconnaissance, and eventually Kurt dismissed the worry. Provisionally.

Blaine had attended a Black Rock Bay primary school, middle school, and junior high, and was now churning his way through Black Rock Bay High School with very nearly the exact same cohort he’d started his educational career with. It sounded like he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do after he graduated. It sounded like he participated in a lot of clubs and extracurricular activities, with a lot of different people. And it sounded like none of the clubs or people had made much of a dent in the fabric of his existence.

As Blaine wound down, there was a lull in the conversation, and Kurt felt no urge to fill the silence. Which was why it was a profound shock to him when his mouth opened again, and he heard himself say, “Are you lonely, Blaine?”

That question. The one he himself hated, a question that automatically brought his natural reserve into full, icy effect—and now he’d asked it himself, of this strange boy, this boy he didn’t know at all.

Blaine smiled just a little, his eyes wide and warm, something on his face like surprise, like softness. So much softness. “Yes.”

He thought Blaine would ask. He expected Blaine to ask. He’d opened himself up to it, after all, and would have nobody to blame but himself if Blaine did ask.

But Blaine didn’t ask. He didn’t ask, and Kurt suddenly realized he wasn’t going to ask, and Kurt put his hand out before he thought about what he was doing. “Give me your phone.”

Blaine fumbled awkwardly in his pocket, and handed it over. “Why?”

“So I can put myself into it.”

He had never made such a demand before. It felt… provocative. Almost scandalous.

When coffee was done, when he was standing at the door and saying good-bye to Blaine, Kurt was shocked to see that the long, dry grasses of the bluff were like faded gold in the light of the westering sun—Blaine had been there for hours. They had talked for hours. It hadn’t felt like hours.

Kurt said good-bye firmly, and closed the door without any further pleasantries. He told himself to step back from the windows, and directed himself quite sternly to return his attention to the chores he’d been in the middle of when Blaine had crash-landed in front of him. But with a very uncharacteristic lack of self-discipline he just stood there, watching Blaine mount his bike and set off down the hill towards the road, sun-gilded and effortlessly athletic despite his bandaged hands. He watched Blaine glide into the golden late-afternoon light until he vanished over the curve of the hill, leaving nothing but an open vista of grasses, crabbed apple trees, and emptiness, tossed and tousled by the relentless, restless wind.

***

Blaine didn’t call him. Kurt was amused, then irritated, then something very distressingly close to disappointed. And then he stopped thinking about it. Or told himself to, which was close enough now that his self-discipline was back in working order.

As always, he did his errands in town with a head-lowered, fast-striding, focused mien intended to make him look as purposeful as possible, since adults had a tendency to interfere with any young person who didn’t look like they were on their way to either school or work. The wind tugged at his collar, twitched the flap of his messenger bag, and undoubtedly would have made a wreck of his hair if he hadn’t anticipated this eventuality and aggressively moussed it into a rigid, towering coif.

The same purposeful deliberation that moved him through the streets carried him through his business at the fabric store, the hardware store, the post office box his dad had rented for business matters, and the library. He was on his way to his final stops (the butcher shop and market that were conveniently located next door to each other), when a rapid tapping sound captured his attention, and brought his eyes up off the pavement.

Blaine was there, inside an ice cream parlor (designated a ‘shoppe’ despite Black Rock Bay’s historically staunch opposition to all tourist-baiting idioms), big-eyed and smiling and waving at him with hands that were free of bandages, hands that looked mostly healed. He was pacing along the window at a pace to match Kurt, tapping on the glass as he went, tapping more frantically as he got close to the wall of the shop, beyond which Kurt would disappear in another three steps. A momentary picture flashed through Kurt’s mind of a puppy in a pet store window, pawing uncomprehendingly at the glass, and despite any reserve he might or might not have fully planned to deploy in the event that Blaine should appear before him, Kurt couldn’t help the slow smile that stretched his mouth.

Blaine’s eyes were sparkling when Kurt came through the door, and he walked to a small café table and pulled out a chair with a courtly gesture that Kurt tried not to be charmed by. Other than the silent, sullen girl behind the counter who was paging through her phone, they were the only people there. Kurt unshouldered his heavy messenger bag with a sigh, and sat.

“This is so great—that you’re here, I mean,” Blaine said as he sank into the opposite chair. He sounded breathless. “It’s good to see you. I wanted… I mean, I almost called you like a million times.”

“Why didn’t you?” Kurt was glad to hear that his voice didn’t sound accusatory, just curious.

“I…” Blaine broke off, and he was blushing, blushing hard, and Kurt watched his throat bob as he swallowed. “I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to say.”

Kurt let the silence spin out. He stared at Blaine.

Blaine went still. “I. Um. I don’t know what to say, Kurt.”

“That must be very uncomfortable for you.”

“Oh, God, yes.”

Just one more beat of silence, just a moment, and then they both cracked up.

Kurt allowed Blaine to buy him a two-scoop sundae with the works, and then they returned to the café table, Blaine with a double-dip cone, Kurt with a brimming bowl of confection that he dug right into.

“Your hands look pretty good,” Kurt observed, licking whipped cream off his upper lip.

“Yes, thanks to you,” Blaine answered, sitting up straighter in his chair. “They’re just fine.”

There was a pause, and Kurt had just put a giant spoonful of vanilla bean with sour cherry and chocolate sauce into his mouth when Blaine continued. “Were you doing your shopping? You looked like you were headed for the market.”

Kurt nodded, and swallowed as soon as he could. “My dad… he’s busy, so I take care of all the household stuff while he’s working.”

“Oh. Well… that’s really nice of you, to do that.”

The conversation had a faintly ridiculous, cocktail-party feel to it, so Kurt just raised an eyebrow and applied himself to his sundae.

Blaine cleared his throat. “So. What have you been up to?”

Kurt thought about it. “Astronomy. Beginning astrophysics. And French. How about you?”

Blaine blinked. “Um. I started a petition to have a superhero theme day during school spirit week. It’s got some support.”

Kurt’s lips twitched. “Oh.”

Blaine shrugged. “Public education system.”

“Yeah. But at least you’ve got… friends?”

“More like fellow hostages, actually.”

“I see. Are you planning to foment a rebellion?”

Blaine’s eyes were wide and amused, full of light. “Oh, I’m fomenting like crazy. Also inciting. And occasionally provoking. Between classes I get all the other students to join me in whistling the theme to The Great Escape.”

“Really?”

“No.” Blaine’s cheeks were pink. “I’ve been keeping my head down and doing my work, same as always.” He looked away for a moment, then turned back. “Astronomy, huh? How do you—”

“I have a telescope. A pretty decent one.”

“You do?” The wide-eyed look was back. “Really?”

“Yeah. And when the moon is new, it’s perfect out behind the house—very little light at all. You can see… well. It’s truly spectacular.” He hesitated. In his head, he hesitated. His mouth, however, didn’t seem to hesitate at all. “Maybe you could come over some night, and I could show you.”

“I would… yes, yeah, Kurt, I would love that, that would be… um. Kurt? What’s wrong?”

The bells over the ice cream parlor door made a cheerful, brisk little sound as the door opened and then shut, a sweetly silvered run of notes that rang out in counterpoint to all the hair on the back of Kurt’s neck standing up. Lyle Halleck turned away from the door he’d just closed, his broad, red-tinged face beaming affably, his eyes fever-bright, avid and devouring—touching everything, settling on nothing. He took in Kurt, Blaine, and the girl behind the counter, without his smile so much as slipping.

“Francie,” he spoke to the girl behind the counter first, who was wide-eyed and rigid, her phone still frozen in her hand. His tone was friendly, almost conspiratorial. “I don’t think you’ve had your break this morning. Why don’t you go take one?”

The girl was gone almost before he finished talking, vanishing through the door behind the ice cream counter with only a faint squeak of sneakers on the tiled floor.

“My mother owns this place,” Lyle said mildly, “and that girl just works too hard.” He dragged an empty chair to the table where Kurt and Blaine sat and settled on it backwards, hemming them both in, his forearms braced on the chair back as he looked from one of them to the other. “So. Kurt. Long time no see. Is this your boyfriend?”

Kurt met his eyes. “No.”

Lyle’s smile stayed put. His eyes twinkled. “Oh. So this isn’t a date?”

“No.”

“Well good. Because we’re all friends here, but I’d hate to interrupt a date. That would be a terribly rude thing to do, amongst friends.” Lyle picked up the spoon Kurt had abandoned on the table when he’d spotted Lyle coming towards the door, and helped himself to Kurt’s sundae. “Mmm. Sweet and tart. Just like you, isn’t that right, Kurt?”

“Leave him alone.” Blaine’s eyes were overbright, hot now instead of warm, and his skin was pale except for two red spots burning in his cheeks, like a candle flame behind milk-glass. The hand not holding his ice cream cone clutched the edge of the table, visibly clenched.

“Blaine. The youngest Anderson, right?” Lyle was as avuncular as a distant relative at a family reunion. “Aren’t you the one who got beat up at school last year?” He asked casually, spooning ice cream. “The way I hear it, three freshmen put you and your little boyfriend in the hospital.” He made a sudden feint, almost a lunge, and Blaine flinched and drew back, his face gray-white. Lyle tsk’ed softly. “Not very tough, are you?”

Kurt started to get to his feet, but Lyle’s hand landed on his shoulder, pinching hard, twisting, seeking out nerve bundles and digging in until Kurt sank slowly back into his chair. He bit his lips and refused to make a sound.

“We’re all friends here,” Lyle said brightly, his soft smile omnipresent, only the brighter gleam in his eyes marking his awareness of Kurt’s pain. “Just three friends, having a nice treat.”

Lyle ate more ice cream. Kurt sat, not flexing away the pinched pain in his shoulder, not looking at Blaine, only looking at Lyle. Lyle caught him at it and offered him the next spoonful of ice cream. Kurt shook his head. Lyle ate the bite himself and then put the spoon down, shaking his head as if disappointed. “What are you going to do, anyway?” Lyle continued, his voice low, amiable, entirely friendly. “Go to Blaine’s aunt, Officer Snoops, and tell her the big, bad wolf is trying to eat you up?” The smile grew. It grew teeth. There were shreds of cherry there, blood-red tatters. Kurt fought off a shiver.

“What do you think she would do, if you went to her?” Lyle went on softly, almost sadly. “Who do you think owns her house? Who do you think owns her boss’ house? And the business where her father has worked for the last thirty years?” He held up his hands, still smiling. “But none of that needs to even be said—not between friends, Kurt—am I right? Friends? I really want to be your—”

The bells over the door sounded much more urgent this time, a sharp, jangling cacophony. Kurt drew in a short, shocked breath, and didn’t realize until he’d done so how dizzy he was from not breathing. Mrs. Halleck stood in the doorway of the ice cream parlor, iron-gray-haired and erect, dressed in a well-tailored suit, one hand just touching the cameo at her throat. She was frowning, dour, and her dark-penciled brows were lowered.

“Lyle, your wife and daughters are sitting in my office waiting for their ice-cream cones; what on earth are you—” She broke off abruptly, looking from her son, to Kurt, to Blaine, and back again. Kurt watched all the hectic color flee from her face, all at once, like someone had pulled a plug somewhere. Without it she was a wan construct, a creature built from wax and white ashes. Her eyes focused on Kurt, and stayed there. “You’re Burt Hummel’s son.”

Kurt took another breath. “Yes.”

Her gaze switched to Lyle. “Get out.”

Lyle went. He went with his head lowered and his feet moving fast, striding away without another word or glance. He had to detour around Mrs. Halleck in the doorway, but the bells barely made a sound at all as he slipped past her, out the door and away.

With Lyle gone, for some reason she seemed even angrier. Her lips compressed to a tight line, and the brows over her dark eyes drew down even lower. “Your father homeschools you,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

She sniffed. “I never held with homeschool. It coddles children. Makes them sissies.”

Kurt could think of a dozen responses to that, but he held his tongue.

When she realized he wasn’t going to respond, she nodded curtly. “Tell your father I shall call upon him soon, to make sure he is aware of the excellent public-school program we enjoy here. As your father, I’m sure he would like to have you educated in a strong, moral environment, and minimize the… waywardness that boys your age are so prone to.”

Kurt’s hands were curled into fists. He kept them in his lap, below the table, below her sightline. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you, Mrs. Halleck; as long as he isn’t working.”

“He’ll see me whether he’s working or not,” she said coldly. “He’s living in my house.”

She turned and went. The bells over the door gave one final sharp, interrogative jangle, and then fell silent. The ice cream freezer came on with a muted whoosh, and both he and Blaine jumped a little.

“You have to tell someone, Kurt,” Blaine began in a low, soft voice. “My aunt Tess, or… okay, okay, maybe not a cop, but… somebody.” He took a shaky breath. “That—that… Lyle. He could be really dangerous, you have to… how about your dad? Does your dad know about him? If your dad knew, maybe he could—”

“My dad knows everything he needs to,” Kurt snapped, and now there were tears in his eyes; he’d held them off for a good long while but they wouldn’t be held back any longer, he got to his feet and hunted for the strap of his messenger bag through prisms that doubled, quadrupled, and then blurred his vision entirely. “Just… leave my dad out of it, okay?” His breath was hitching, his throat working, his heart hammering hard deep in his chest. He swallowed, and fought for audible speech. “Just stay out of my business, Blaine. I can take care of myself.”

He went, and he heard Blaine scrambling up from the table, heard the clatter of a wooden chair falling to the tile floor behind him, but then he was out and through the door and running down the street, ignoring the fierce and bitter wind off the sea, paying no mind to the tears in his eyes that tracked warm-then-cold streaks straight back towards his temples.

He heard Blaine calling after him. He seemed to hear it for a long, long time, as he ran on without looking back.

***

The wind that night was enough to make the old house sway and creak, and every sound snapped him awake with a cold and sudden certainty. He kept the lights off, just as he’d kept them off all through the afternoon and evening. It was all too easy, with the lights on and the sun fading from the sky, to imagine the place as one warm and tempting spark in the vast windswept darkness. Better to disappear, to hide, to not-be.

Kurt spent the night curled up next to his bed rather than in it, his back to the mattress and his face towards the dark doorway that led to the hall and downstairs, and he listened and watched as long as he could. When sleep overtook him it was seamless, and so when he slewed effortlessly into dreams and the creaking turned to stealthy feet on the stairs and a sudden, half-glimpsed shape in the doorway he woke up with a half-choked scream already lodged in his throat, his ice-cold fingers cramping around the chef’s knife he clutched in one hand.

After an ageless, endless night he finally greeted the gray dawn with red-rimmed eyes. He put the knife down and rose stiffly to his feet, then slowly shifted from foot to foot until his blood was moving again. Pale light crept through his windows, and through the doorway the grainy half-shadows were just a reflection of the light coming from downstairs: there was nobody there.

There was nobody there.

Nobody.

***

Fatigue made him terribly heavy-eyed, but with coffee and breakfast and morning chores behind him, fatigue alone wasn’t enough of an excuse to disregard his schedule. He was slowly and somewhat sleepily churning through two books at once—a French translation of A Brief History of Time and his French grammar workbook—when the screen door opened behind him.

Kurt jumped up from the table. His grammar workbook slid from his lap to the floor with a sharp, clapping sound, but he kicked the book aside without looking at it as he turned around. Mrs. Halleck stood in the doorway, looking around the room with her eyes wide and her mouth drawn into a rigid frown.

“The kitchen table belongs over there, next to the wall,” she said, pointing. Her frown deepened. “It’s right over the cellar door, where you’ve put it.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Halleck,” Kurt said, keeping his voice steady. “My father and I like the kitchen table right where it is, actually.”

She stopped her scrutiny of the room to focus on him. The frown stayed in place. “I own this house.”

“Yes, but you’ve rented it to my father. I understand he paid three years’ rent in advance.”

Mrs. Halleck raised an eyebrow. “Does your father usually make you privy to all his business dealings?”

Kurt raised one right back. “Do you think your position as landlady grants you some kind of right to judge the affairs of your tenants?”

“Don’t be insolent,” Mrs. Halleck snapped coldly. She stared at him. Kurt stared back. When she finally looked away, she sniffed. “You’re a very ill-mannered young man. I insist on speaking with your father at once.”

Kurt bent over and picked up his book, brushing it off before setting it back on the table. “I’m afraid my father is in New York right now, meeting with his agent and publisher. He should be back in a day or two.”

“And he left you with no chaperone? No guardian?” From her tone of voice you could have inferred that Kurt only needed someone to turn their back for twenty seconds before he’d light the couch on fire and start dealing heroin out of the living room. Under other circumstances, it might have made him smile.

“I don’t need a babysitter, Mrs. Halleck. I’m fifteen, I can take care of myself.”

“Fifteen…” She seemed to be mulling the word over, looking past Kurt and out the window to where the cliffs fell away to the ocean. When she snapped her attention back to him, her eyes were, remarkably, even colder. “Has my son been here?”

Kurt stood up straight. “On Halloween. Trick-or-treating with his daughters.”

Her eyes remained fixed on him, cold and implacable. “Was your father here at the time?”

Kurt blinked. “He was in his study, working, but yes.”

Her mouth twisted, as if at some weird taste. “You’re enticing him.”

Kurt was so stunned he could barely credit what he’d heard. “What?”

“You heard me.” Mrs. Halleck drew herself up, crossing her arms and rubbing her own shoulders briefly before facing off against him. “Whatever it is that you hope to gain from your little game with my son—probably money, you brats always want money—you’re not going to get it.” She lifted her chin. “You’re not going to get one red cent, I’ll tell you that right now, so you can just put that thought right out of your mind.”

Kurt was looking for words, trying to find a way around the outrage backing up in his throat, when she changed the subject, her voice cool and accusatory. “What have you done with my things?”

“Your things…”

“All the decorations you took down—which you had no right to do, by the way, and if you’ve lost or damaged any of them I’ll see that your father reimburses me for the full value—”

“I haven’t—I simply moved everything down to the cellar when I… when we redecorated, Mrs. Halleck. Nothing was damaged, nothing was lost. I can return everything to you tomorrow. Shall I bring it to your office?”

“I’ll come back tomorrow to pick them up. Goodness knows there ought to be at least one responsible adult checking in on you.”

“Mrs. Halleck, that’s really not necessary; I can bring them to—”

“I’ll pick them up tomorrow,” she said tersely, her arms crossed, and then turned and left without another word.

Kurt stood still, watching her rigid, retreating form, his hands clenched white on the back of his chair. When she was in her car and over the hill and out of sight, he finally closed his eyes.

***

The man at the hardware store eyed Kurt’s purchases warily: a shovel, a hoe, a trowel. “Not exactly gardening season,” he said suspiciously, and Kurt suppressed a sigh.

“Just getting stocked up for next year,” he replied in what he hoped was a calm tone of voice—carefully, because despite his best efforts, sometimes his ‘calm’ voice had a tendency to shade over into ‘bitchy’. “Besides, it’s always fishing season—and my dad and I need something to dig up worms with.”

He suspected that ‘fishing’ would be a magic word, and it must have been so, because the man didn’t say anything else. He just used a hank of twine to tie all three implements together, gave Kurt his change, and then went back to his newspaper. Kurt collected the bundle—it was unwieldy, but manageable—and left the store, elbowing his way awkwardly through the door.

He headed towards his bike, resigned to tying the entire bulky bundle to his package carrier—but two buildings down from the hardware store he spotted a promising alley. It was deserted and dim in the gray day, nothing down there but dumpsters and a tall wooden fence at the end, so after a quick look around he ducked into it. He had just worked the shovel loose from the bundle when the hair went up on the back of his neck, and he looked up to find Lyle Halleck walking slowly toward him, smiling as if all his birthdays plus Christmas had somehow arrived early.

“Well, well,” Lyle said with good-natured bonhomie, “what an unexpected but pleasant surprise.”

“I have to go,” Kurt said calmly, and tried to keep his grip on the shovel natural and unaffected, when what he really wanted to do was hold it like a weapon. “My father’s waiting for me.”

“Now, Kurt, I already overheard my dear mother complaining to one of her pets on the City Council about her little visit to you this morning, so we both know that’s a lie,” Lyle said, mock-scandalized. Then, mournfully, shaking his head: “You seem to lie an awful lot, for a lad of your tender years.”

Kurt’s skin crawled. “I have to go,” he repeated calmly, and picked up his full bundle of tools again, turning to the side of the alley that gave him the widest berth around Lyle—only then Lyle sidestepped and was right there, right in front of him.

“You can go—after we have a minute to catch up,” Lyle said quietly, and up close his face was red and flushed and his lips looked slick and wet and his eyes were sparkling, intense, and utterly terrifying. “It would be rude, to see an old friend and not give him just a minute to—”

“Kurt?” Kurt’s eyes darted to the mouth of the alley—and he almost dropped the bundle in his arms when relief swooped in because it was Tess Thibodeau, not in uniform but nevertheless unmistakably her, peering into the dimness of the alley with a paper cup of coffee in one hand and her cell phone in the other. “Kurt, is that you?”

“Hi, Officer Thibodeau,” he said, and ducked around Lyle without another glance, heading toward her. His heart was pounding, but he worked hard to keep his voice steady. “It’s good to see you.”

She was looking past him, over his shoulder, her brows lowered while she frowned. “Mr. Halleck?”

“I just offered the boy a hand with his tools,” Lyle said smoothly, and despite the way he’d dismissed Officer Thibodeau before in the ice cream parlor, Kurt heard fear in his voice, saw it in the way Lyle tensed up, his shoulders rising. His smile was still there, but it looked forced, a rictus. “There’s no law against that, is there?”

“Not that I know of,” Officer Thibodeau said levelly, but her eyes never left Lyle until he had slipped past them and headed down the street, finally turning a corner and vanishing from sight. Kurt took a breath.

“It looks like you could use a hand,” she said to him, her voice now so kind and gentle that he had to look away, had to press his lips together. “Want a lift back to your house?”

“Thank you, yes,” he said, hearing huskiness in his throat and hating it, but unable to help it. He put the shovel into her extended, open hand, and followed her out of the alley.

***

Tess glanced at the tools as she bundled them into the trunk of her car on top of his bike, then raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s November, kid. What are you, some kind of avant-gardener?”

Despite everything, Kurt couldn’t help his mouth puckering up. “Oh my God.”

Tess shrugged. “I know. That was horrible. I just couldn’t resist.”

Apparently semi-endearing ridiculousness was a familial trait. Kurt ducked his head. “They’re for next year, mostly. But for now we need something to dig up worms with when my dad decides he wants to go fishing.”

Tess tilted her head. “Huh. Really? What kind of fishing does he do?”

Kurt met her gaze evenly. “Do I look like a boy with a deep understanding of fishing minutiae?”

She grinned at him. “Maybe—you seem to know an awful lot about an awful lot of things, Mister Smartypants.”

“Well, I hope it won’t disappoint you too much when I admit that, at this time, fishing is firmly outside my scope of mastery.”

Tess laughed at that, and closed the passenger-side door after he’d climbed in. She leaned in the open window for a moment, smiling. “God—you are something else, kid. No wonder Blaine thinks you hung the moon.”

She turned and walked around the car to the driver’s side as soon as she said it, so Kurt had a few moments to let the heat in his face subside before she slid in next to him, and belted herself in.

“How is Blaine?” He let himself ask as they rolled sedately down Main Street. It felt awkward and strange to ask, but he thought it would have been stranger not to.

Tess only glanced at him, checking carefully for traffic before crossing an intersection. “He’s… you know. Normal. Quiet. A whole lot more going on than he’ll ever talk about.” There was a beat of silence. “He likes you a lot.”

“I… like him too.” It was true, and it was a perfectly noncommittal statement, but still saying it felt like edging out onto something narrow and slippery. Kurt swallowed. “He’s… uh. Nice.”

That was dreadful, but Tess only gave him an amused glance when she came to a rolling stop. “It’s good to see him making friends. It’s been a while. I mean, he used to be such a sunshiny kid, he had friends everywhere, but last year he… well, he got beaten up pretty badly at a school dance, and ever since then he’s been… quiet. Keeps to himself.” She shifted in her seat. “After that, I never saw him get really excited about anything, until he told me he met you.”

Kurt kept his eyes lowered, not sure what to say to that. He was still thinking about it when she changed the subject. “Does your dad know about Lyle’s… about Lyle?”

Kurt flashed back to that day at the ice cream parlor, and his cheeks flushed for an entirely different reason. “Is that what Blaine wanted you to ask me about?”

But she looked honestly puzzled, puzzlement that shaded rapidly toward alarm. “Blaine? What the hell does Blaine have to do with—has Lyle done anything to… wait, what happened?”

“Nothing—nothing happened,” Kurt said, and he realized that Blaine must have kept the incident between them and Lyle to himself. That… changed things, shifted things. Just a little. “Blaine just… that’s the same thing he asked me, that’s all.” Kurt sat up a little. “My dad knows. He did wonder why he… why someone like Lyle is still running around when he’s so obviously dangerous—”

He stopped because he could see Tess’ hands visibly clench on the steering wheel, and when he glanced at her profile, she was pale. She was quiet for a long time, and when she did start to talk, her voice was almost too soft to hear. “There was a family here in town—I’m not going to tell you their name; it doesn’t matter anyway, really, I guess. They had a son, a boy about your age. A quiet, bright, good-looking kid; seemed kind of young for his age. He got a summer job at that ice cream parlor that Mrs. Halleck owns, and Lyle… well.” She took a deep breath. “The mother came to see me, once she found out—and that only happened because the boy was… he’d been hurt.” Kurt watched her swallow, and felt dreamy, low-grade horror steal through him, curling in the pit of his stomach like a snake. “I was ready to make the arrest, everything was ready to go, I was just waiting for the indictment paperwork to come through—only it never did, because…”

“Let me guess,” Kurt said, and he was amazed to hear how calm he sounded, like he didn’t feel sick and too-warm and shaky at all. “Because of Mrs. Halleck.”

“I’m not sure it was her,” Tess said slowly. “I have no proof that it was. But the next thing I knew, the family’s mother stopped returning my calls, and after a couple days when I stopped by to see them, their house had been emptied out and the whole family had moved away—to somewhere in Montana, is what I heard. I wanted to follow it up, I wanted to…” she trailed off and glanced at Kurt, and Kurt could see her pulling herself back under control, as if she had only just recollected who she was speaking to. “But that didn’t happen,” she finished abruptly, and then turned away from the road to look at him. “You have to be careful, Kurt. I know that you’re very responsible for your age, and I know your dad’s looking out for you, but… you have to be careful. Please tell me that you’ll be careful.”

“I’ll be careful,” Kurt said, but his lips felt numb, and that low, sick feeling was still in the pit of his stomach. The car climbed above the last hill at the end of town, rounding a curve to a spectacular vista of late-afternoon sunlight breaking through gray clouds, spilling golden over the wide, wild cliffs, grasses waving gracefully in the wind—but all of it seemed suddenly, oddly cold and remote to him, pitilessly beautiful, glorious and desolate.

***

The following morning he was up early, but nevertheless Mrs. Halleck arrived only minutes after he finished bringing up the last of her accessories and decorations from the cellar—he didn’t even have time to move the kitchen table back into place. He had anticipated her arrival and kept the front door closed and locked, rather than opening the house to the early-morning air the way he usually did. Mrs. Halleck didn’t bother to knock, she just turned the knob, and then immediately used her keys. Kurt had to force himself not to smile at her outraged and quite audible squawk when she realized the locks had been changed. He opened the door with his face as composed and calm as he could make it.

“Mrs. Halleck—” he began, but she simply pushed past him, already talking fast.

“I demand to know what on earth you think gives you the right to change the locks on my house,” she began, her chin lifted defiantly. The rare morning sunshine combined with the flush in her cheeks was actually a very good look on her—as if anger was a singularly animating force, granting her an unusual vitality. “Your father—”

“Signed a three-year lease;” Kurt interrupted firmly. “A document which you also signed. Given our previous conversation, yesterday I took the opportunity to review the terms and conditions set out in it very carefully. And it clearly states that the lessee is entitled to change the locks on the specified property if they choose to do so, so long as at the end of the lease term, they either re-install the previous locks or provide the lessor with a full set of keys to grant access.”

She looked as if he’d slapped her. Her drawn-on eyebrows, raised in shock, looked cartoonishly, comically surprised. “You… you insolent, disrespectful, rude little boy…” Her mouth moved, but no more words came out of it. It occurred to Kurt that there was a certain satisfaction in offending those who were used to sycophancy—and it further occurred to him that he might just have discovered a key underlying principle of his own existence. He would have to be careful.

“The truth is, Mrs. Halleck,” he said, glad to hear no tinge of audible schadenfreude in his voice, “my father is often away, or busy with his writing, and he leaves the operation of the household largely to me. I hope that in the future you can be more comfortable dealing with me—”

“I most certainly will not,” she snapped. “In fact, I plan to inform your father immediately upon his return of your pretensions and your rudeness, and also that I will be looking—actively looking—for the least excuse to abrogate the lease agreement, and evict both of you from my house.” She drew herself up. “What do you have to say to that?”

Kurt blinked. “I say that I strongly suspect that your motives have less to do with my behavior, and more to do with your fears about your own son’s,” he replied evenly, and once again he watched all the color drain from her face in a matter of seconds. “You know—your son. Lyle. The pedophile.”

He saw her curl her hands together, and knew as surely as if she’d said it aloud that she was struggling not to hit him. “I’ll have you out of here—you and your father both—before the month is out,” she muttered, breathless and rushed, then she darted forward and picked up the box he’d brought up from the cellar with all of the rugs, throws, drapes and pictures he’d removed. “In the meantime, I’ll take these things—God only knows what would happen to them if I left them with you, you irresponsible… lying… degenerate little—” she broke off, staring down into the box, then looked up at him. “Where are my pillows?”

“Pillows?”

“My throw pillows, that were on the couch—the seafoam-colored ones, with the starfish pattern—”

Kurt shook his head. “There were no pillows like that on the couch, Mrs. Halleck. Perhaps they’re at one of your other houses?”

She hesitated for a moment, as if considering the possibility, then shook her head. “They were at this house, I’m quite certain of it, and I am not leaving without them,” she said, and put the box down.

“Mrs. Halleck,” he said steadily, “I promise you—I’ve given you everything that was here…” but either she didn’t hear him, didn’t believe him, or simply didn’t care, because she abruptly brushed right past him—heading for the trap door that covered the stairs down to the cellar. “Mrs. Halleck!—”

“They’re my pillows,” she muttered, and when he buttonhooked around her he saw that her face was flushed and implacable and yet somehow weirdly, eerily blank. “This is my house and they’re my pillows and—you get out of my way—” 

Kurt had both hands up to stop her, but she used both of her own to shove him—suddenly and unexpectedly—low in the belly, hard enough to knock him backwards. He chased his balance for a moment, skittering back, but his heel caught on a throw rug that went out from under him and the next thing he saw was a bright flash, and the next thing he heard was a hollow-sounding, bone-deep thunk when he banged his head on the radiator near the wall.

He told himself to get up, tried to force himself up, but when he moved a sudden bolt of pain lanced through his head that made the whole world go away for a moment, and when he swam woozily back to himself Mrs. Halleck had already dragged the heavy, wooden cellar trap door open, propping it with a long piece of lumber that Kurt kept on the top step.

“Mrs. Halleck…” he said, but she had already disappeared down into the dark. His voice was blurring in and out of audible range, his whole head felt like a bomb had gone off in it, and his stomach was clenched tight around that tense, low sickness—panic, and horror, and so much sorrow—

He heard her scream—it was shrill, and piercing, and seemed to drill directly into his brain. “Mrs. Halleck,” he said again, but it was no more than a whisper, and then he heard the sudden gritty clatter of her feet racing up the concrete cellar steps, saw her face— her skin waxy-white and bloodless, hollows beneath her eyes shadowed shock-purple, the eyes themselves wide and horrified—appear above the floorboards for just a moment. Then one of her flailing arms caught the door prop and sent it flying, and the heavy door crashed shut with a tremendous, floor-jarring thud—right on the top of her head.

The scream cut off as if it had been severed with a knife. Tears sprang to Kurt’s eyes and he squeezed them closed as hard as he could, one arm curled around his throbbing head, one around his belly, crying as quietly as he could and listening for her, for the sounds of her, for moans or shrieks or just quiet sobs like his own—listening for the sound of her, listening for something other than silence.

He listened for a long, long time, listened until he had cried himself quiet; but silence was all he heard.

***

Her car was there.

Kurt sat, blinking, on the couch where he’d half-slumped, half-sat after dragging himself up off the floor. His vision was still blurry, and he still had weird black spots blooming occasionally in his visual field, but nevertheless through his windows he could see Mrs. Halleck’s black Bentley, distinctive and unmistakable, parked at the top of the drive, outside the front door.

The keys were undoubtedly in her bag.

Which was with her.

In the cellar.

A deep, wrenching shudder suddenly shook him, abrupt and unexpected, making him gasp. In the aftermath, he started shivering, just a little.

He needed to think. Plan. Think. But his brain felt like a bruised, helium-filled, fragile bubble of nonsubstance, aching and only very tenuously tethered to his body, and thinking felt like swimming through tar. He could feel himself scrambling, trying to forcibly clear the fog that concussion and shock had him in, but no matter how he tried to grope his way back to clarity, fog was all there was. And that wasn’t so bad, really—it was calm in the fog, calm and quiet and still; except for the shivering.

He sat, gazing at that gleaming, black monstrosity of a car, telling himself to move. Demanding that he move, act, think—do something.

He didn’t move. Not even when sudden movement caught his eye—Blaine, on his bike, cresting the hill to the top of the drive and then coasting to a stop, eyeing the car, then turning his head to peer into the windows of the house.

Kurt didn’t move. He moaned a little—just once, very quietly, and one hand stole to his chest and pressed there, feeling a tangible flutter like the panicked wings of a trapped bird.

Blaine came through the screen door and then suddenly was right in front of him, looming large and close, his eyes huge and warm and pained as he knelt down in front of Kurt.

“Kurt—oh my God. Are you okay? Was it Lyle? Let me call—I can call somebody. Your father? My aunt Tess? I can—”

“Don’t,” Kurt said, and just unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth felt like a monumental effort. “Don’t call anybody. Please.”

Blaine blinked, and swayed a little on his knees. His hands were in the air, as if he wanted to reach out, but didn’t quite dare. “But you’re hurt; you’re—”

So much kindness in his voice, so much caring, and Kurt’s vision blurred again. He closed his eyes. “If you want to help me, Blaine, if you really want to help me…” he took a breath, it snagged in his throat halfway through, ending on something that was not quite a sob. “You can’t call anyone, or tell anyone. Nobody. Ever.”

It sounded childish, like a play-yard-solemn pledge, but when Blaine finally reached out and took his hand, it didn’t feel childish at all. Blaine’s hand was warm, strong, solid. “I… okay, Kurt. Nobody. Ever. I promise. Whatever you need.”

That broke him, finally, and he had to twist away from Blaine and pull his hand back to cover his face with it, crying hard.

***

Blaine gave him a carefully-folded, pressed white handkerchief he’d pulled from a pocket, then left him alone for five minutes while he bustled around the kitchen, returning with tea. Kurt watched him hesitate, finally settling carefully into the middle of the couch, close, but not too close. Under different circumstances, it might have made him smile.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Blaine asked him after Kurt had sipped his tea and put the mug on the coffee table. “You look… really pale.”

“I’ll be fine—I bumped my head, that’s all. I’m still seeing double and I suspect there’s a killer headache coming, but I’m fine.”

Blaine didn’t look at all reassured by this. “But—Jesus, Kurt, obviously you’ve got a concussion, shouldn’t you…” He trailed off, pressing his lips together for a moment. “Right. Nobody. Ever.”

Kurt took a deep breath. “You promised,” he said, but it was an observation, not a reminder. “You promised, without even asking why. Why?”

He watched Blaine swallow, watched the color come up in his cheeks. “Because… because.”

The world seemed very quiet. The fog was gone, but there seemed to be something wrapped around the two of them anyway, a pocket of space and time that was only theirs. Kurt shifted on the couch. “Because.”

Blaine was so close, so clear, Kurt could see his pupils flare, his flush brighten until he looked like a candle flame encased in a person. “I… yes.” He took a quick, soft breath. “Because.”

And then the quiet was broken, the fragile bubble around the two of them vanished as if it had never been there, because there was a sound, a familiar sound—a car, pulling up the drive, and Kurt was abruptly submerged in panic, racing heart and his mouth suddenly perfectly arid.

A cop car. Tess. Kurt watched her pull up and park behind the Bentley, watched her stare at it as she climbed out of the car, and tried to center himself. He groped internally, blindly, frantically; reaching for the self-possession that would allow him to calm his heart, slow his rapid breathing, subdue the hot glow he could feel in his cheeks—but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, he…

“Go wash your face,” Blaine whispered to him urgently, his face panicked and flushed, tugging him up off the couch and pushing him towards the bathroom. “Take whatever time you need; I can—I’ll stall her. Go!”

Kurt went. He found himself in the first-floor bathroom with the door closed behind him, staring at his own shocked face in the mirror over the sink. Blaine had been right; his face looked like a raw wound, like a hectic patchwork of pain. Like the face of a guilty person.

Kurt turned the cold tap on as far as it would go, took a deep breath, and plunged.

***

When he emerged, Blaine and Tess were chatting, laughing—Blaine looked so normal, composed and casual, no trace of the panic that had been so evident before. Kurt relaxed. A little.

“Hey, Kurt,” Tess said cordially, turning to him. “I just came by to check on things, and also to see if your dad was back—I thought I might ask for a word or two with him.”

“You just missed him,” Blaine said blithely, lying so smoothly that for a moment Kurt was shocked. “Mrs. Halleck showed up, and the two of them decided to take a walk—you know that whole thing grown-ups do when they don’t want to discuss things in front of the children.” Blaine was smiling, Blaine was calm, Blaine was… dangerously believable.

Tess snickered. “That’s pretty lofty disdain coming from a kid who still gets an allowance and spends it on comic books,” she said mildly. “But okay—I’ll come back another time, I guess.” She glanced out into the driveway, then looked back at Kurt. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Kurt said, and his joints loosened with relief when he heard his own voice, perfectly steady and perfectly cool. “Really, Officer Thibodeau. It’s just fine.”

“Okay, then,” Tess said, tossing up her keys and then catching them. “You tell your dad I’ve got a copy of The Murder Mechanic right in my glove box that he’s going to have to sign sooner or later, okay?”

“Of course,” Kurt said, and it seemed unbelievable, but she was actually leaving, moving towards the door, no visible trace of suspicion as she let herself out, waved to both of them, and then walked down the porch steps, whistling softly.

He couldn’t look away until she was in her car, until she backed up, until she drove away, disappearing down the drive and over the ridge of the hill, out of sight. Then he turned his head to look at Blaine. His neck creaked. “Why…” It was just a husk of air, so he swallowed and tried again. “Why did you do that?”

Confident-casual-Blaine fell away, vanishing as if he’d never been there, and the other Blaine was back—Blaine with his soft-looking, vulnerable mouth; Blaine with his blushes and his warm, empathetic eyes; Blaine, who looked like his whole heart lived right there on his face. “I don’t know,” Blaine said quietly, shaking his head. “I just wanted to… I wanted to help. I want to help you, Kurt.” He swallowed visibly, and took a breath. “I don’t really know what you need or how to do that; I don’t understand, but… I want to help.”

Kurt closed his eyes. Something was cracking. Something very fundamental, foundational—something that should have led to an earthquake, or some kind of volcanic eruption. But the cataclysm, if there was one, was very far away, because here there was only quiet, only the soft breeze coming in through the open windows, raw salt sea air and sunshine hush and quiet, just the two of them.

“Okay,” he said softly, and took a breath. “Okay, Blaine.” His breath was piling up in his chest like silt in a tidal pool, his throat growing shallow as his voice tried to fight its way out through all the secrets that had backed up there, secrets he was never supposed to divulge. Crack. Crack. Crack. “There’s a lot I need to tell you. Why don’t you make some more tea?”

***

“My mom left when I was only six,” he began haltingly, and found that it was easier to talk if he stared into the sooty maw of the fireplace, rather than into Blaine’s painfully earnest eyes. “I guess… maybe motherhood wasn’t really her thing, or maybe just being the wife of a small-town mechanic wasn’t her thing—either, both—whatever it was, I came downstairs for breakfast one morning and found my dad standing in the kitchen, reading the note she’d left him and crying.”

Kurt cleared his throat. It was a dry recital of facts, because there really was no way to articulate the sadness and terror of that morning, or of the days and weeks afterwards, when the two of them tried to find a way forward together, a way to go on. “It took a long time for the two of us to be really okay again. I think it actually might have been easier for both of us if she’d died. If she’d died, we would have grieved, and then moved on. But knowing that she left us because she wanted something else, something that wasn’t us, something we couldn’t give her…” He had to swallow. “It hurt. For a long time.”

Blaine’s voice was soft and low. “I’m so sorry, Kurt.”

Kurt didn’t look at him, he just shook his head. “When my dad started writing, at first it was just a way for him to… to work through it, I guess; he didn’t have a therapist and he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who would look for a support group, so one day he just… grabbed a notebook and a pen and started writing stuff down. I guess he talked to the notebook because he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. But then—I remember this happening, instead of just seeing him sit down with his notebook after dinner as long as there wasn’t a game on, he had it with him all the time—and then little by little, he changed from writing about himself to writing about somebody else, somebody he had made up.” Kurt closed his eyes, and swallowed before he went on.

“He called it ‘spinning yarns’, and for the longest time he was… he just really seemed embarrassed by it, by the fact that he was writing stories—but I loved it. I asked him to read me parts, and he did—the parts he thought were okay for a seven-year-old to hear, anyway—and I loved knowing that my dad had made up all those people, that he’d made up a whole world for them to live in. It was like magic to me. And I knew, somehow, that writing the stories was helping him, was bringing some happiness back into his life.” He sighed. “Dad… he never meant to go anywhere with it, I’m pretty sure. I was the one who went online after he finished his first book and looked into how to submit a manuscript—”

“At seven years old?” Blaine asked.

Kurt glanced at him, and shrugged. “I was eight by then. I was precocious. But dad fought me on it for a long time—didn’t think the book was good enough, didn’t think he was good enough. But in the end I talked him into sending it, into taking the chance and sending it out, because we had nothing to lose.” Kurt sipped more tea. “I will never forget the look on his face when he got the letter telling him the manuscript had been accepted for publication. He hugged me so hard my ribs creaked.”

Kurt dropped his head, staring into his mug of tea. “I thought that was it—I thought that moment was the last of us hurting over what happened with mom, that it was us, me and dad, finally ending that story for good, so that maybe we could start another one together—only that wasn’t the way it worked out.”

“Because the book did well?” Blaine asked softly.

Kurt nodded. “Better than anyone expected. Then they wanted dad to expand it into a series, and he agreed because since finishing the book he’d been… itchy, and restless, and wondering what to do with himself, and it looked to me like he went back to spinning yarns quite gladly. And then the second book did better than the first, and then his agent called and said there was some interest in doing a one-book-per-season show on cable, and it just… it just kind of snowballed.”

Kurt glanced at Blaine, then looked back into the depths of his mug of tea. “Our lives changed, but not that much, really; it’s not like authors get hounded by paparazzi or anything. But Dad was happy. He said writing a story was like building an engine, where you took all the requisite parts and then tried to make them work together smoothly, then you chased out the ticks and quirks, and tried to make the whole thing go vroom.”

“Vroom,” Blaine repeated quietly. “Yeah. His books go vroom.”

“There was some level of press interest when the cable series was announced,” Kurt continued. “Mostly homespun-Ohio-car-mechanic-finds-surprising-success-as-author kind of pieces.” He sighed. “And that was when my mom showed up.”

He looked up in time to see Blaine blink in surprise. “Oh.” Blaine glanced around. “But she didn’t… I mean, she’s not—”

“She threatened to sue my dad for custody,” Kurt said, an old, old bitterness thick in the back of his throat. His mug was empty. Pity. “But that wasn’t… it wasn’t that she wanted me. It’s just what she thought would get my dad to cough up the amount of money she was asking for.”

“Oh my God; Kurt—”

“It’s okay, Blaine,” Kurt said levelly. “Honestly, that was the thing that finally let me stop missing her, that helped me let myself off the hook for not being enough for her—was realizing that she never really cared about me in the first place. That there was just no room in her to care about anyone but herself.” He shrugged. “Dad paid her—I don’t know how much. I hated that he did it. I hated it. But I knew… he’d done it for me. Because he couldn’t risk losing me. Because no matter what, he would’ve done anything for me. He… he was like that.”

The last sentence wasn’t much louder than a whisper, and when he looked up Blaine was staring right at him, his eyes wide. “He… was? Like that?” Blaine’s eyebrows drew down faintly. “He’s not… not…”

“He’s dead,” Kurt said slowly, losing sight of Blaine’s stricken face as his own eyes blurred and overspilled. “He died six months ago. Prostate cancer.” That was as much as he could get out before his throat closed up on him.

***

The tears that time were scalding, unstoppable, but brief—by the time Blaine came back from the kitchen with more tea Kurt was done, unhappily curled around the ache deep in his chest that he thought would probably always be there whenever he thought about his dad. When he spoke, his voice was husked raw, but calm.

“We had some time,” Kurt said quietly, trying to keep the story at arm’s length, because that was the only possible way for him to get through it. “We had a little time to make plans, to try the best we could to set up what I asked him for, what I told him I wanted: a way for me to be on my own, to be independent until I was legally of age. I didn’t want a guardian, or a conservator or anything like that—and I really didn’t want my mom back in the picture. I didn’t want her anywhere near me.”

Blaine was closer now; still and composed next to him on the couch, his face melancholy, his eyes red. “Of course not.”

“Dad… he wrote as much as he could, as fast as he could, stashing everything so I could give his agent one book a year, at least for a while. We found this place, and paid up front for a three-year lease. And then he put everything he could in my name and just had me… start taking over things, to get people used to the idea that he was some kind of recluse, to get them used to dealing with me instead of him.”

“And it worked…” Blaine said softly, marveling. “I mean… that’s incredible, that it worked.” He shifted a little. Kurt could feel his restraint, questions he wasn’t asking—that maybe he didn’t know how to ask. “Your dad…”

“He stayed with me as long he could,” Kurt said softly, tilting his head back and staring at the crossed beams of the ceiling. He could make it through this, he could say it out loud. He was his father’s son. “He did everything he could, but when he got close to the end he just… he didn’t want me to see him go too far down, didn’t want me to see him in too much pain, you know? So he did everything he could, and then he left me in the middle of the night, and went into the sea.”

Kurt took a breath. Almost done. Almost. “The tide and undertow are fierce, here—people get lost every year. He knew that. He decided to take a chance that he’d never be found.” He swallowed hard. “He was right.”

He’d made it. He’d made it through without crying again. He closed his eyes. There was quiet for a while. When Blaine said something, it was too soft to hear.

“What?”

Blaine’s voice was shaky. “I said—you must have been so lonely. Weren’t you lonely?”

That question. The one he hated so much. The one Blaine had never asked, until now; the one he refused to really answer. Until now. “Yes.” Saying it out loud, admitting it, was like pushing a giant stone off his chest. “I have been. Very lonely. And frightened.”

He opened his eyes. Blaine wasn’t quite crying, but his lashes were wet and the compassion and pain on his face made him look almost otherworldly; raw and blurred and beautiful. “Frightened?”

Kurt lifted his chin. His head felt very heavy. “Yes. There are two dead bodies in my cellar.”

***

It was cold in the cellar, cold and dim and low-ceilinged, not cold enough to see breath but it felt like that—like a crypt, like trespassing on ground that ought to have been left alone.

Mrs. Halleck had come to rest about five feet from the bottom of the stairs, sprawled on her side with her back to them, and for a moment it seemed impossible that she wasn’t asleep—unconscious, there was no blood, she was just there on the floor like she’d fallen down the stairs and there was no blood anywhere—but no, she was still, too still. Too still to be anything but dead.

Kurt only looked at Mrs. Halleck for a moment. Instead, he watched Blaine. Blaine was next to him, damp lashes wide around his solemn eyes, dark and somber in the weak light from the naked bulb overhead—like a young mourner at his first funeral; awed and shocked hollow in the presence of death.

“She wanted her things—all the things I stored down here when I redecorated,” Kurt said quietly, drawing a hushed breath. “I brought them up for her, but she said there were things missing—pillows, she said; throw-pillows. I tried to stop her from coming down here, but she was… she pushed me, and I fell, and I couldn’t stop her. And then she came back up the stairs screaming, hit the board wedge that holds the trap door up—it’s heavy, it’s really heavy, the door—it hit her head, the door hit her head and that was… that was it.”

“Screaming,” Blaine said softly, blinking a little as if he were trying to make sense of things, his eyes never moving from Mrs. Halleck’s still, silent form. “Screaming?”

Kurt moved a few steps deeper into the cellar, and tugged the chain for the second light, the one that illuminated the rest of the low space, all the way to the back where an old claw-footed tub had been stored, dark with dust and grime but no longer empty, occupied by a slumped, still form with a curtain of dark auburn hair obscuring its face. “I assume she saw that.”

Blaine stepped forward and stood next to him, swallowing visibly. “That… who?”

“That is—was, I guess—Elizabeth Anne Hummel.” Kurt cleared his throat softly. “My mother.”

He waited. He waited for shock, for horror, for reprisal, for accusation, for blame. Blaine glanced at him—just once, just briefly—and then looked back at the body slumped in the tub. Kurt waited. But the shock, when it came, was his, when Blaine reached out and took his hand, a warm, hesitant fumble of fingers, shaking as badly as his own.

“Tell me.”

***

The fog was giving way to warm afternoon golden sunshine upstairs, the air salty and raw and fresh after the close, airless chill of the cellar. Blaine sat at the other end of the couch, staring down at his hand, the one that had held Kurt’s, flexing his fingers slowly, as if they ached.

“Did you kill her?” Blaine didn’t look at him.

Kurt swallowed. “I didn’t… not on purpose.”

He watched Blaine, but there was nothing, no ripple of response, just patience, silence. Waiting. Waiting for the rest of it, for the last of it. “That day…” it was hard to speak, the words leaving his mouth grudgingly, as if each one had weight. “It was… god, only two days ago; the day that Lyle surprised us in the ice cream shop. I was… you know, I was upset, and when I came home, I found my mother here. I still don’t know how she found me, but she did.” He took a careful breath. “She’s… she was never a stupid woman; she figured out that dad was gone pretty quickly, and once that happened she was full of plans—she wanted everything, she couldn’t stop things from being in my name, but as my mother she could basically control all of it until I was of age. And I panicked.”

He saw Blaine blink in profile, slowly. “You panicked?”

“I… yes.” Letting go of the words shifted something in him, in his throat, in his chest. “I just wanted to get away from her; that was all. Get away so she could never find me again. When my dad… after my dad was gone, I went through all his things—everything he left behind. That included his medications, and a small brown bottle of pale blue liquid with no pharmacy label, but he’d written on it ‘greatest need’. I thought… I thought it was some kind of major painkiller; I thought I could drug her and then get away from her when she got sleepy or passed out.” His hands and toes were tingling. His face burned. “I made her tea, I dosed it, she drank it.” He licked his lips. “I’m pretty sure it was cyanide. She was dead in a matter of minutes.”

Blaine looked at him then, and it was like falling through space—there was horror and sorrow and a terrible, deep distress evident in Blaine’s expression, but no blame—horror, but not at him, not because of him. For him. “Oh my god, Kurt.”

“I didn’t mean for her to die.” His voice was getting hoarse again but he didn’t care, he couldn’t care about anything at all except for the look on Blaine’s face, the tenderness that made him feel like some cold, dark poison was being siphoned from some dreadful wound deep in his chest. “You have to know… I didn’t want that to happen.”

Blaine didn’t say that he believed him. Blaine didn’t say anything. But he reached out again and took Kurt’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and when Kurt squeezed (he couldn’t help it, he tried not to, but he just couldn’t help it), Blaine squeezed back.

***

There was quiet, golden light coming through the windows, dust motes in the air. Blaine’s hand in his. It was nice. Strange. Kurt closed his eyes and saw patterns, sunshine patterns and bright colors blooming, and felt so light, as if Blaine’s hand was the only thing anchoring him to the couch, like he might float away if Blaine let go.

“Kurt.”

“Yes?” He didn’t bother to open his eyes.

“I want to help you.” Blaine’s thumb traced feather-light over one of his knuckles, and Kurt shivered. “Can I help you?”

“I think… you already have.” He felt a hollowness, but not an emptiness—he was just… so light.

“The car. Mrs. Halleck’s car.”

Kurt opened his eyes, and touched down as gravity rushed back in. “Yes.”

“I’ll take it. As soon as it gets dark—I’ll leave it in front of her office. But until then… the garage? Is there room for the car in your garage?”

Kurt blinked. He blinked again. He tilted his head, and with the strange angle and the sunshine and the disorientation from what was most likely a concussion there was just no defense against Blaine’s face—it pierced him, transfixed him, such a beautiful face, so open and present and… and there. “Blaine. Are you conspiring with me?”

Blaine’s cheeks flushed pink. “I… yes?”

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Oh, yes.”

Kurt watched him carefully, closely, and felt his own cheeks go warm when he let his head dip just a little, a faint nod. “Okay.”

***

He got the keys from the cellar while Blaine opened the garage. He did it quickly, rifling through the detritus that had spilled from Mrs. Halleck’s bag at the foot of the cellar stairs, not looking at anything other than what he needed to. When he came back upstairs Blaine was there, and together they moved the kitchen table back on top of the flat trap of the cellar door. It was stupid to feel better when they’d only done that much, but he did.

“Keys,” Blaine said, holding out his hand. Kurt’s mouth twitched.

“I do know how to drive, you know,” he said softly. “There’s really no reason I can’t—”

“I have a license, I’m seventeen, I’m related to the local constabulary, and my life will bear enough scrutiny that I could claim teen angst or a burgeoning drug dependency or even a rash of high-school pranksterism if I get caught driving it back to town tonight. Give me the keys, Kurt.”

Kurt put the keys in Blaine’s outstretched hand. Blaine’s fingers were warm. “How long were you practicing that?”

Blaine smiled softly. “Since I thought I might need it. Conspiring with stubborn, strong-willed, self-sufficient types brings its own set of challenges.”

Kurt pressed his lips together. “Sounds awful.”

Blaine shrugged. In the late afternoon light his eyes were the color of honeycomb. “It works for me.”

Blaine was moving towards the front door when Kurt stopped him. “Wait,” he said, going to one of the lower kitchen drawers. He held out a pair of leather work gloves. “Wear these, okay?”

Blaine blinked, looking faintly surprised, but he took the gloves. “Huh. Of course. I’ll be right back.”

Kurt found himself in front of the open refrigerator while Blaine drove the Bentley into the garage—it seemed outrageous and faintly horrible to be hungry, given the events of this long and terrible day, but he was. He was pondering the contents of his crisper drawer when Blaine came back in, tugging the gloves off, and went to the sink to wash his hands. “I thought I might make… um. Are you hungry?”

“I… actually, yes.” Blaine finished drying his hands and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “But I should call my folks and tell them I won’t be home for dinner, so they don’t worry.” He glanced up while thumbing through screens. “They keep kind of a close eye on me, since the… since I got out of the hospital.” He pressed the phone to his ear. “I’ll tell them I’m with my friend Sam, so they won’t ask questions.” He frowned. “I’d better call Sam too, so he’s ready to cover for me, just in case—he’s done it before, when I was… when I needed some time to myself.”

Kurt turned back to the crisper. Apparently, conspiring just came naturally to some people.

***

He made sage and mushroom chicken with roasted vegetables because it was a simple recipe, easily adapted to what he had on hand. Outside the house gold was giving way to gray as the afternoon slipped into evening, but inside it was warm and bright, with Blaine getting in the way with offers of help until Kurt gave him a glass of the white wine he’d opened for the sauce and told him quite firmly to stay on the couch.

In the haze of grief that had followed his father’s death there had been a grim, strange sensation of ‘playing house’ that had lasted for weeks, and this was kind of like that all over again—only not grim, not really anything like the bleak horror of that time. He let Blaine set the table, and took a half-glass of wine for himself. The food was nearly ready the next time he looked up, and realized there was wine and lit candles and linens on the table, with classical guitar playing softly in the background after Blaine had figured out his sound system. Playing house. Kurt smiled ruefully down at the pan he was deglazing.

Blaine had nice manners. He complimented Kurt on the food, and it was actually a lovely dinner until a car backfired out on the road, causing Blaine to flinch hard enough to scrape his chair across the wooden floor, dropping his fork to the table with a clatter. “Sorry,” he said as he resettled himself in his chair, two red spots high on his cheeks. “I’m… I’m afraid I’ve got an exaggerated startle response. Now.”

Kurt put his own fork down. “Because of what I told you?”

Blaine’s eyes widened. “What? Oh, no—of course not. I’ve been… it’s been since last year, almost to the day, actually. I took a boy to the Sadie Hawkins’ dance at school. Afterwards, I got beaten up—some broken bones, a ruptured spleen that needed surgery. I ended up in the hospital for a while.” He said it casually, almost carelessly, but even in the warm light from the candles his face looked shadowed, haunted.

Kurt used his napkin. “I’m sorry.”

Blaine shrugged. “I’m fine, now. Just… don’t throw me any surprise parties, okay?”

“I’ll try to work around it.” Kurt picked up his fork again. “That… Lyle said something about what happened to you, didn’t he?”

Blaine nodded. “Yeah. He saw me jump once when Francie at the ice cream shop dropped a tray, and since then he tries to spook me every time he sees me, unless his family is around. Or his… um. His mother.”

Kurt took a sip of his wine. Then a gulp of his wine. “Such charming people, the Hallecks. Pillars of the community.” He sniffed. “It’s a pity only one of them is dead.”

“Kurt!” Blaine was open-mouthed, scandalized, but then had to abruptly cover his mouth with his hand when a raw, shocked-sounding laugh came out of him. “That’s… that’s terrible.”

Kurt lifted an eyebrow. “And yet, profoundly true.”

Blaine dropped his eyes to his plate, shaking his head, but smiling. He didn’t look haunted any more.

Between the two of them, they ate everything. “This was the first time I’ve been really hungry since… well, since my mother showed up,” Kurt admitted, rubbing his full stomach. “I haven’t been able to eat or, sleep, or… or anything, really; thinking about her, downstairs.”

Blaine got up from the table with his own plate in hand, and stopped to pick up Kurt’s. “I can imagine.” He took a breath, and then met Kurt’s eyes with his own, his mouth set in a firm line. “Why don’t we decide what we’re going to do about it while I do the dishes?”

***

Such a strange, surreal conversation. The kitchen smelled of sage and lemon dish-soap, a warm, bright haven in the cold November night. Blaine did the washing-up as if the kitchen were his own, at-home and cozily domestic, with his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow and his cheeks going gradually pink from the steam. It was entirely at odds with the topic of discussion, which covered all the alternatives, risks, and pragmatic realities of body disposal.

Kurt listened, and spoke, but he couldn’t help feeling removed from the conversation—as if he were floating above it, looking down on it, a vaguely interested observer. His father’s death had wounded him in a way that had felt permanent. His mother’s death brought horror home to him; a deep core of rage, guilt, and terror that had seemed impossible to escape. And Mrs. Halleck’s death had at first seemed like the final tilt towards madness—as if death was somehow his destiny, as if he was death itself: that eternally alone, and that helpless to stop devastating everything and everyone around him.

But Blaine was alive. Blaine glowed with life, wholesome and somehow inescapably innocent despite the fact that they were debating the merits of burial versus disposal-by-sea. Blaine was there with him, truly there with him, and he was very much alive.

Blaine was wiping his hands on a dishtowel when Kurt gave in to the question he’d wanted to ask for quite a while. “Why… why are you doing this?” he asked, his voice pitched so low that he might have been inaudible if Blaine hadn’t just turned off the kitchen tap. “Why are you helping me?”

Blaine looked up at him through his lashes, his head lowered, and answered the question with a question. “Why did you tell me… everything you told me?”

Kurt leaned against the kitchen counter, folding his arms. His lips felt numb when he spoke. “I… didn’t want to, but I did. Somehow I did want to. I think… I think I needed to.”

Blaine nodded, his lips pressed together. “Sounds about right.”

***

That night the wind lashed the house unmercifully, a howling tumult that rattled the windows and made the old walls creak and groan. Kurt felt very small and solitary, huddled in his narrow bed. He was tired—more than tired, beyond tired—but the wind probably would have made sleep elusive if not impossible, even if he hadn’t been stiff and tense, both hands clutched around his cellphone.

When his phone chirped, he jumped. His eyes were too blurred to focus on the words of the text for a moment, and then they cleared.

Thank you for dinner, everything was great.

The code they’d agreed upon was simple. So Mrs. Halleck’s car was parked in front of her house, the keys had been disposed of, and Blaine was home safe and hadn’t been caught. Kurt let go of a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and a rush of warm relief tingled through him from his scalp to his toes. He took another breath, and waited while his heart returned to its normal rhythm.

Outside the wind screeched, but now his bed seemed a refuge rather than the last retreat of some huddled and fearful creature. Blaine’s text floated before his eyes, glowing softly in the darkness, and Kurt shivered a little with the sudden, keen awareness that he was no longer the only person in the world who knew his secrets. Blaine knew. Blaine knew everything. It was terrifying. Exhilarating. And somehow comforting, this tenuous but undeniable connection between them, the knowledge that he was no longer alone in the same way he had been.

He replied to the text before he could think better of it, before his brain could catch up with him and make him think better of it. His reply wasn’t part of their established code, but it was code nevertheless, regardless of whether or not Blaine deciphered it.

Welcome.

***

Morning brought sporadic rain and rough, raw wind, with an icy bite to the air. Kurt woke after actually sleeping for seven hours, did his chores with quick efficiency, then built a fire in the fireplace, started a stock for soup, and told himself quite firmly that he had better things to do with his Saturday than wait for Blaine to appear. He settled at the kitchen table with coffee and an apple and an open-faced toasted cheese sandwich on rosemary bread, his astrophysics textbook and his notebook open next to him. He was deep in dynamic non-linear wave propagation when he heard a car approaching, and looked up with a smile—which froze and then faded quickly when he saw a black Escalade pull up outside.

Lyle didn’t bother with an umbrella, but dashed through the rain to the porch, and Kurt debated only a few moments before he pulled the door open and let him in.

“Mr. Halleck.”

“Lyle,” Lyle said, shaking his head and scattering water everywhere. He hadn’t bothered to wipe his boots, and he left dark, muddy footprints on the wooden floor. The rain had turned his blond hair to ash brown, and the pouches under his eyes looked livid in the gray morning light. “Have you seen my mother?”

Kurt nodded. “Yes—yesterday; she came by for some of her things, the things I took down when I redecorated this place.”

Lyle scrutinized him. “You saw her.”

“I did, yes. I just said so.”

“Yesterday.”

“Yes. Yesterday morning, quite early.”

“You gave her…?”

Kurt drew himself up a little. “I gave her the box of things she had come for. She took the box, she had a short talk with my father, and then she left.”

Lyle looked around at the house, then back at Kurt. His eyes narrowed. “Oh. She spoke with your… father? Is that right?”

“That’s correct.” Kurt pushed the chair he’d been sitting in under the table, keeping both hands carefully set on the back of it. “But he’s not here at the moment, I’m afraid.” He paused. “Why are you asking me about this?”

“It seems that… she seems to be missing.”

Kurt pursed his lips. “Missing?”

“Yes. At least… she’s not at home, not at her office, and she’s not answering her cell phone.”

“I see. Well, I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning, so—”

“Did she say anything to you?” Lyle blurted, then stopped for a moment, taking a breath. “About me?”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “About you?”

Lyle smiled. It was a knowing, sly smile, and for a horrible, visceral moment Kurt expected to see bugs squirming out from between his teeth. “She has some… funny ideas. About me.” He took a step closer. “You don’t have any funny ideas about me, do you, Kurt?”

Kurt crossed his arms over his chest and forced himself not to take a step back. “Your mother and I didn’t have a lengthy conversation,” he said coldly. At least that much was true. “She’s not here, and I’m not interested in discussing any of my ideas with you.” His voice thankfully sounded calm and cool to his own ears, so he pressed the advantage. “I would like you to leave.”

Lyle’s smile didn’t waver. “That’s not very gracious of you, Kurt—especially seeing you’re generally the man of the house, what with your father’s… absences. You would think, what with the way you seem to not want anyone prying into your business—a boy your age, left alone so much, so far away from… from everything, you know, with so many appearances to keep up, you should want to… stay friendly.” He took another step, and suddenly he seemed overwhelmingly close, the size and height of him, the smell of his damp clothes and his wet skin and something else, something furtive and dark, something that made Kurt want desperately to turn his face away. “You never know when you might need a friend, right?”

Kurt was aware, suddenly, exquisitely aware of every single thing within his immediate vicinity that he could get to that might possibly, conceivably serve as a weapon. He noticed as if from far away that his brain had automatically made calculations based on estimates of his advantages (speed, slightness) as well as his disadvantages (size, strength, and the uncertain match-up of ruthlessness versus psychopathy). It was like floating through time, everything slow and clear-edged and visible down to millimeters, he was disconnected but at the same time could feel himself inhabiting his body from his fingertips down to his toes, suspended between one breath and the next, seeing and hearing and feeling and knowing everything…

…Including the sound of a motor, heading up the drive towards the house. Kurt allowed himself to take a step back, to take the next breath, and time snapped back into its normal groove with a nearly audible click that made him swallow hard, his heart beating just a little too fast. Lyle turned, and both of them watched as a black-and-white cruiser pulled up into the drive, parking next to the Escalade. Tess Thibodeau also didn’t bother with an umbrella, but her tan hat and windbreaker seemed to be sufficient proof against the rain. Kurt buttonhooked around Lyle to open the door. Tess wiped her feet carefully before she stepped in, but Kurt noticed her eyes fixed on Lyle right away, and never left him.

“Good morning,” Tess said, removing her hat and shaking it off outside the door, then replacing it.

“Good morning, Officer Thibodeau,” Kurt replied, and turned towards the kitchen. His voice was still even, still perfectly calm. “What brings you here this morning?”

“Just coming by to check in,” she said slowly, unzipping her windbreaker. Kurt was running water into the teakettle, so her next words were directed to Lyle. “I like to keep an eye on Kurt,” she said, shrugging. “You know, just to make sure he’s okay.”

Lyle looked like he’d bitten into unripe fruit. “I suppose that’s why you haven’t put any time into looking for my mother—too busy minding other people’s business; isn’t that right?”

“Not at all,” Tess said evenly. “I’m very interested in finding your mother, Mr. Halleck—in fact, I was planning to stop at your place next; I have some questions for you.”

“Make an appointment with my secretary,” Lyle growled, and then turned abruptly and left the house, banging the door shut behind him.

They both watched as Lyle climbed into his car, backed up, and sped away. When Tess turned back to him, her eyes were sharp, but not suspicious or unkind. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Kurt said softly, measuring loose tea. “He wanted to know if I’d seen Mrs. Halleck. I understand that she’s missing.”

“She seems to be,” Tess said, gazing pensively out the window for a moment before turning back to him. “I’m going to need to speak with your father—”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt said, setting cups and spoons on the table. “He was called back to New York yesterday afternoon. Contract negotiations.” Kurt motioned towards a chair. “Please, won’t you sit down? I’ll have some tea for you in a moment.”

Tess sat down, removing her hat and balancing it on one knee. “When you speak with your father, let him know I’m going to need to see him as soon as he gets back—I believe he might have been the last person to see Mrs. Halleck.”

Kurt blinked. “But… he wasn’t. She came back to the house, but he was still out on his walk. I put the box of things she’d come for into her car—”

“You put the box in her car?” Tess leaned forward in her chair.

“Yes.” It was true.

“Where in the car?”

“I put it in the trunk. Mrs. Halleck slammed the trunk, got in the car, and drove away. That was the last time I saw her.” He sat down across the table. “Is there a problem?”

She was gazing at him, still not suspiciously, but with a certain level of scrutiny. “If she doesn’t turn up, yes, there’s going to be a problem—she’s absolutely not the type to go missing. And her car is parked outside her office; I got Lyle to open everything for me, he has duplicates of all her keys. We found the box in the trunk, but nothing else—no purse, no keys, nothing.” She regarded him calmly. “Can anyone confirm any of this? I mean, if your father—”

“Blaine was here,” he replied, and got up from the table as the kettle started to whistle. It was easier to say the rest with his back to her. “You know—he was visiting me yesterday; he was here when you came by. He stayed until… he stayed for a while.”

Tess’ eyebrows had drawn down. “Blaine saw Mrs. Halleck leave?”

“Yes. That is, I…” He broke off as another car came slowly up the drive, a red Subaru. “Well; it looks like you can ask him about it yourself. Here he is.”

Blaine might have been dressed for church; bowtie and white pressed shirt and a neat blazer under his raincoat, and of course an umbrella. Kurt opened the door wide. “Your aunt Tess is here,” he said, softly, then stepped back out of the way. “I’m making tea. Would you care for some?”

“I… would, thank you,” Blaine said politely, shaking his umbrella outside before closing it and leaning it up against the outside wall of the house. “Hi, Aunt Tess. What are you doing here? Is… is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Blaine,” Tess said, looking from one of them to the other with more of that careful scrutiny. “I understand you were here yesterday when Mrs. Halleck left.”

Blaine nodded. Kurt turned away and busied himself in the kitchen so as not to watch him. “I was. Is she making trouble?” Butter wouldn’t melt. Kurt marveled.

“No, but she might have found some. She’s missing. Seems you two boys were the last to see her, so far as I’ve been able to determine.”

“Oh.” A soft word, cautious and concerned, and Kurt brought the pot of tea and an additional cup to the table without even bothering to glance at Blaine, who obviously didn’t need any help. “Well, we did see her—but that was yesterday morning, early, just after we saw you. She took her box of things and went, and it seems like somebody surely must have—”

“She took the box?” Tess asked, not sharply, but focused.

“Yes—well, that is, Kurt packed up the box and put it in her trunk; but yes, she took it with her.”

Tess leaned back in her chair, and her eyes once again moved between the two of them. “Okay. I guess that’ll do for now.” She took her hat off her knee and put it back on her head, then pushed her chair back from the table. “No tea for me, Kurt—thank you, but with things as they are I’ve got to get back to town and get some work done.” She got to her feet, her keen, bright eyes tracking them both. “And you two—stay away from Lyle Halleck. Or Mrs. Halleck, for that matter, if you see her—just call me. You boys just… behave yourselves, okay?”

“Of course,” Kurt said, at the same time that Blaine said, “We will.”

Tess cracked a smile. At least a small one. “I’m glad you’re looking out for each other, at least. See you around.”

She went, and Kurt held the door open for her, and stayed in the doorway and waved until her cruiser rolled slowly down the hill and out of sight. Then he closed the door and turned to find Blaine only a few feet away, staring at him with none of the open earnestness that had been on his face when he was talking to Tess. Blaine was pale, his jaw set, his eyes large and solemn with their stark fringe of lashes.

“Tonight?” Blaine asked softly.

Kurt nodded. “Tonight.”

***

He’d hoped for fog, or thick mist; something to give them some cover—but the rain had only increased throughout the day, and the evening brought more of that howling wind, plus thunder and lightning, and the sole comfort Kurt could find was that he’d certainly gotten the cover he’d hoped for: any curious passers-by would be unable to see anything at all through the downpour. The cliffs were wild at night, a grey and constantly-whipping landscape of weedy tussocks, uneven turf, rocks, brambles, and scattered branches blown down from the few trees that remained clinging to the bleak cliff-tops.

He supposed it was appropriate weather for such a grim and grisly task, but it was difficult to appreciate the pathetic fallacy when he was drenched to the skin and ice-cold to his bones, numb and frozen and shuddering constantly, awash in horror and rainwater and mud.

“Are you okay?” He had to yell to make himself heard, even though Blaine was shoulder-to-shoulder with him, hauling the small plastic tarp Kurt had wrapped his mother’s body in inch by torturous inch over the treacherous ground.

“Define ‘okay’!” Blaine yelled back, his carefully-styled hair now a wild riot of wet curls, his pale face a black-and-white chiaroscuro limned in tempest and lightning. He shook his head before Kurt could respond. “I’m fine, Kurt—let’s get this done.”

Kurt turned back to the task at hand. Everything seemed surreal and hyperreal at the same time, and his brain seemed to keep skidding sideways. The tarp. The tarp had been left over from when he’d first moved into the house and decided he had to repaint his bedroom, which had been a dreadful shade of coral pink. He’d spent a sunny afternoon painting, with his father dropping by throughout the process with small distractions—a glass of cool lemonade, judicious (and endearingly unqualified) remarks on his choice of paint and décor, a word or two of praise for his efforts. Despite the looming loss that had hung over him constantly back then, it had been a good day; a warm day, a day when he knew himself to be known and loved, and life had been a precious commodity.

The tarp bunched in his hands now was stiff and cold and muddy, and, incidentally, wrapped around his mother’s body. The juxtaposition seemed maddeningly incomprehensible, this grotesque exercise so very far away from that long-ago sunny afternoon that it was impossible to imagine the distance that had led from one to another.

Kurt shook off the thought and kept pulling. The thunder was vying now with the crash and growl of furious water from the ocean below the cliffs—which meant they were close.

Closer even than he’d thought, because the cliff edge, nearly invisible in the murky rain, loomed up faster than he’d expected it to, in the middle of another herculean pull—and there was a moment when Kurt felt sure that he and Blaine were going to tumble right off the cliff along with their grisly cargo. Then he had Blaine or Blaine had him, he couldn’t be completely sure, but there was a tangle and a scramble and a few heart-pounding seconds of terror, and then the tarp clutched in his grasping hand was whipping in the wind like a flag in a hurricane, light and empty, and there was one glimpse of the grey, huddled lump that was his mother’s body falling—gone between one breath and the next, gone into the rush and roar of the black, churning waves. Gone. Done.

Kurt tried to step back from the cliff edge, but he was breathless and dizzy and his body seemed to have other ideas, and before he knew it he was flat on his back, gasping for air with all his muscles trembling like he’d driven them to the very edge of exhaustion. He tried to say something—okay, I’m okay, I’m just dying a little I think—but from the corner of his eye he saw Blaine splayed out next to him, face up in the rain with one hand pressed to his chest like he’d just collapsed at the end of a marathon.

“I guess I need to work out more,” he heard Blaine say, the words barely audible over the howling wind, and that was terrible and ridiculous and also, given the circumstances, horribly tacky, but Kurt couldn’t help the shocked, crazy-sounding laugh that forced its way out of his throat—and then the two of them were laughing, and he also seemed to be crying a bit, and Blaine’s fingers found his in the mud, and they both held on.

***

His fingers were too frozen to sort through his keys, and the two of them were undoubtedly going to die a damp and ignominious death of exposure before he managed to get the front door open. Blaine said something, but his teeth were chattering so badly it was impossible to understand what. Kurt thought he heard the word ‘cold’, chopped into three syllables, and he had no argument with that.

“Tomorrow,” he said, still fumbling with the keys with fingers that he could no longer feel.

“What?” Blaine peered at him, huddled and shivering.

“We’ll have to… we’ll do the other one tomorrow—I don’t think I can go through all that again tonight.”

“Oh.” Blaine swiped a muddy hand through the wet, sodden tangle of his hair. “You sure?”

“I am,” Kurt answered, and his own hand clenched tight on the keys as he leaned over and kissed Blaine, gently, just once, on his icy lips.

Blaine’s teeth stopped chattering as though a switch had been flipped. Kurt turned back to the door and finally unlocked it, swinging it wide. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his numb toes. “You’d better come in and get warm.”

“Was I cold?” Blaine said faintly, and stepped inside.

Kurt had left towels stacked next to the door, and he buried his face in one, handing the other to Blaine. He scrubbed the water out of his hair, but despaired of getting any further when his clothes were literally dripping. He toed out of his boots with a grimace, and looked up to find Blaine watching him, hair wild and eyes wide, his white shirt soaked translucent and plastered to his chest and arms. Kurt swallowed.

“I should probably go,” Blaine said softly, and Kurt had no idea if that meant that Blaine wanted to go, or if it meant he thought he should offer to go so Kurt could ask him to stay, or if it meant that maybe Blaine’s idea of a romantic moment didn’t include the aftermath of disposing of a dead body, or if it meant something else entirely, or maybe nothing at all—but by then Blaine had collected his blazer and his coat, and opened the door again to the tempest outside.

“Okay. See you tomorrow,” Kurt said, and his voice sounded small to his own ears.

“Tomorrow, after school,” Blaine agreed quietly. “Good night, Kurt.”

“Good night.”

***

He stood under the hottest shower he could stand until the water ran clear, then filled the tub with more scalding water and soaked in it. He sat with his eyes closed, his muscles burning, aching; waiting for his brain and heart to stop ticking like an overworked engine. It took a long time.

One down.

One to go.

Blaine’s lips had been so soft. Cold, but… soft. The memory twisted through him, and he shivered despite the heat.

There was music, floating through his mind—something he couldn’t immediately place; something lilting and a little wistful, appealing and sweet, waiting to take him away. Kurt drew a careful breath and let it out slowly, deliberately forcing his focus back to real sounds: the softly dripping tap, lapping water, the removed howl of the storm outside, the slow creak of the house as it stood stalwart against the wind and rain. Standing strong against everything that was trying to destroy it.

Real sounds, in his real life. Blaine and his soft lips, Blaine and his (bewildering, disconcerting, inexplicable) acceptance and friendship and support—was no part of that. Blaine… was someone he couldn’t afford to be distracted by. Not now. Not when his life—the life he’d fought for, sacrificed so much for—was still his to protect. Or to lose. He needed to remember that.

He stayed in the tub until his mind was clear, calm, and properly focused. The water was cold when he got out.

***

The next day the storm had blown south, but the weather remained grey and cool, foggy and damp enough that Kurt felt like moss might start growing on him if he stayed still for too long. He rode his bike into town—slowly, in deference to his still-aching muscles—and did his errands: library, drugstore, post office, bookstore, bakery, groceries. The town seemed eerily quiet, sounds were oddly muffled, even indoors, and there was a strange sensation of pressure that made Kurt wonder if perhaps he still had water in his ears. The streets and businesses were nearly deserted, but nevertheless Kurt felt watched; he had to fight to keep his head up and his shoulders back, not scurry from place to place as if he were waiting for some unknown monster to jump out and scare him.

“That was quite a storm last night,” the bookstore proprietor—he thought her name was Susan—said to him as he browsed the nonfiction shelves. She was gazing pensively at the grey mist pressing against the store window with her chin propped on her hand, the bleak light leaching her dark brown skin to a wan copper. “I thought the roof was going to rip right off my house and I’d just float away and be lost at sea.”

“I had some similar thoughts myself,” Kurt said dryly, taking Space Chronicles off the shelf and putting it on the counter.

“You be careful on that bike, now,” Susan told him as she handed him his change. Her eyes were warm and kind, and unlike most admonishments he received from adults, hers didn’t feel patronizing.

“I will be,” Kurt said, and nodded to her as he left the shop. Outside the world pressed close and yet empty, a cool and claustrophobic atmosphere that seemed almost haunted. Kurt tucked his book into one of the pannier bags on the rear package carrier of his bike, and then paused as all the hair on his neck stood up. He held his handlebars tightly and looked around, but there was nothing—just the quiet street, dark windows regarding him with myopic blandness from the shops across the street, from the dwellings above them. 

His skin was crawling. 

Kurt straddled his bike resolutely and pushed off, headed for the small grocery down the street, his last errand before he could go home. His bike tires on the wet pavement, and his own breath in his ears, seemed very loud.

At home he turned on lights, built a fire, and put on music before he did anything else. It helped, but some of the uneasiness lingered, as if it had wrapped itself around him during his trip to town and now didn’t want to let go. Kurt firmly shook off the fanciful for the practical, unpacked and put away his purchases, and started preparations for making winter root vegetable soup. He sat at the kitchen table and applied himself to his schoolwork for a few hours, then put his books away and ate a bowl of the soup with some of the crusty bread he’d bought, gazing out the window at the fog outside. The soup was a success. His attempts to study… not so much, so he moved to the couch in front of the fire with Space Chronicles.

That proved to be a successful distraction, and when he next looked up he was surprised to see the fog outside fading to darker greyness. It was early evening, school had been out for several hours now, and there had been no word from Blaine.

Kurt put his book aside, re-built the fire, and then settled back on the couch, his eyes fixed on the slow alchemy that turned wood to ash.

It would be dark soon, and he would have much to do.

***

He had just gotten out of the shower and was toweling himself off when his phone rang, making him jump. He fumbled his phone out of the pants he’d left puddled on the floor, glancing at the clock before he answered—12:37 am. Blaine.

“Kurt.” Blaine sounded horrible, his voice raw and hoarse, his indrawn breath audibly rattling. “I’m so, so sorry, incredibly sorry—I woke up with a cold this morning, and I came home after school to change my clothes and then I laid down on my bed and it was just supposed to be for a minute but I… I fell asleep, god, I just woke up, please tell me you can forgive me for this; I can be there in ten minutes—”

“Blaine,” Kurt interrupted, leaning against the counter and closing his eyes, trying—and failing—to not feel so ridiculously relieved. “No, listen—it’s fine, everything’s fine, you don’t need to come over. Just go back to bed.”

Blaine started to say something, broke off to cough explosively, then cleared his throat. “No, I said I was going to help you, and I’m going to help you, I’ll be right there—”

Kurt combed through his tired brain for the details of the conversation they’d had in his kitchen; their first conspiratorial talk. Their code. “Everything’s done, Blaine. I, um, went with Plan B.”

He heard Blaine take a sharp, wheezy breath. Kurt had wrapped Mrs. Halleck in a tarp and buried her out back, in the narrow strip of earth between the house and the scree of low bushes that encircled the rear of the first floor. It had been (relatively) easy, the ground still soft after yesterday’s downpour. That had been their Plan B for body disposal, if burial at sea had proved unfeasible. “Everything’s fine. Go back to bed, Blaine. Get some rest.”

“Oh.” He could clearly hear Blaine breathing in the pause between words, an alarming, crackling wheeze. “Listen, Kurt, I wanted to… I mean, I feel just terrible—”

“You sound terrible,” Kurt said softly, leaving the bathroom and padding through the hall to his bedroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist, turning off lights as he went. He sank onto his bed. “Blaine, really. Just please take care of yourself, and get better, okay?” He hesitated, then spoke before his brain could make him think better of it. “I’m relieved, actually—I thought maybe I’d committed some kind of dreadful date night faux pas.”

Blaine made a soft noise, then sniffled a little. “Kurt, no. You… it was unforgettable.”

Kurt closed his eyes and listened to Blaine breathing. “Okay,” he said, and he was working up to ‘good night’, when Blaine spoke again.

“Have you seen Lyle?”

Kurt opened his eyes and blinked into the darkness. “No, not since… since yesterday morning, when he was looking for… for Mrs. Halleck. Why?”

“No reason, I just… I’m worried about him. About what he might do. You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

“I’m always careful,” Kurt answered softly.

“Okay,” Blaine said, and sniffed again. “I guess I’ll see you… I’ll see you soon.”

“Get better, Blaine. Good night.”

“Good night, Kurt.”

Kurt hung up the phone, and plugged it into the charger on his nightstand. His muscles burned like they were on fire, his back ached, and his hands were blistered in five places from the shovel. He’d ruined two pairs of pants and two pairs of boots in two days—but the house was his own again, the cellar empty, and Blaine… Blaine would be fine.

Kurt ditched the towel and decided he was too tired to bother with pyjamas. He was asleep almost the moment his head hit the pillow.

***

The fog cleared the next day, leaving the November sky a blameless blue, with the air golden and warm. Kurt was up early, and spent the first few hours of the day on laundry and housekeeping chores—but it was altogether too nice to stay inside, so he took a long walk along the cliffs (the ground was still a little boggy in places, but most of it was fine,) and then decided to take care of the outdoor work that had been piling up. He was out front mowing when he saw Tess drive by in her cruiser, and he returned her wave cordially.

It was a busy, but quiet day, the first one he’d had in what seemed like a very long time without a terrible threat hanging over his head. He breezed through four chapters of French in the afternoon, and when he aced the vocabulary self-test he allowed himself to text Blaine.

Feeling better?

It was at least twenty minutes before the response came. I’m fine, see you soon.

Kurt frowned at his phone, then shrugged, and shut it off.

That evening the stars were out in brilliant force, and Kurt took his telescope out for the first time in weeks. He set it up on a flat stump in the field next to the house, turned off all the lights, and settled himself with his sky map, a thermos of cocoa, and a couple warm blankets. It was far too early for the Leonid meteor shower, but the new moon should allow for a good view of Jupiter, and there was always—

His preparations were cut short by a car turning into the drive, then pulling up to the house. From where he was in the field he could see Blaine in the faint light bouncing off the house from his car headlights, peering at the dark windows. Kurt got up and went over to him, calling his name softly. He saw Blaine jump a little, then darkness returned as he shut off his car.

“Kurt—what are you doing out here—is everything okay?” He was just a vague shape in the dark now that Kurt’s night vision was gone, and his voice was still raw-sounding.

“Everything’s fine, Blaine—I took out the telescope, that’s all. In the field right over there.” He considered a moment, then went on. “I’d ask you to stargaze with me, but with your cold maybe it’s not—”

“Forget my cold,” Blaine said, and Kurt could see him a little now, enough to see that he was smiling, just a little. “I’d love to.”

He wrapped Blaine in his blanket and gave him a cup of cocoa, then reviewed his star map and got to work with the telescope, pulling Jupiter into focus. He fell into a soft patter almost unconsciously, about the telescope and the season and the stars and the planets, about the Leonid meteor shower and the Corona Borealis, and Blaine came and stood next to him and looked, and asked questions, and oddly his favorite thing seemed to be the few craters visible in the sliver of moon—which just went to show that there was no accounting for taste. Kurt told him so, and Blaine laughed in the close darkness, and after that it didn’t seem strange at all when they somehow both wound up huddled in the blanket, sitting on the ground and holding hands, gazing up at the clear black of the infinite sky.

“I don’t…” Blaine had to stop and clear his throat. “I don’t want to get you sick.”

“I don’t care,” Kurt said softly. There was enough light to see that Blaine’s eyes were fixed on him, looking at his eyes, his mouth, his throat. “Do you want to kiss me?”

“I… yes.” He could hear Blaine’s heartbeat in his voice. “So much.”

“Then you should.”

Blaine made a soft, broken sound, something that caught in his throat and ended with a breathy near-moan, and leaned into him. His mouth was hot, wet, and sweet with chocolate, and the entire world simply drifted away as Blaine kissed him deeply, slowly, shaking a little and gasping—they both were, touching nowhere but their tangled fingers and the sweet, soul-skinning press of open mouths, killingly gentle. When Blaine pulled back Kurt swayed toward him again, yearning and dizzy. “Oh.”

“Okay?” Blaine’s voice was so low, so quiet.

“Again,” Kurt said, and Blaine’s hands came up to cup his face—shaking hands, so warm they burned his cold cheeks—and yes, again, the world gone because there was just no room for anything but Blaine’s tongue softly tipping against his, Blaine’s open, sweet-hungry mouth. Kurt could feel his eyelashes fluttering and he let his eyes drift closed, so heavy, his head tilting back and letting Blaine take his weight, letting Blaine take his mouth, he would let Blaine take anything, anything he wanted, he would—

They both pulled back at the same time, staring out across the field.

“Did you hear that?”

“What was that?”

The noise—a kind of slithering, stealthy creak from an indeterminate direction—wasn’t repeated, but Kurt shivered hard anyway. It was cold, and dark, and more or less impossible to see anything further than five feet from where they sat.

“Stay still,” Blaine breathed in his ear, the quietest of whispers.

“What do you think it was?” Kurt breathed back.

“I don’t know, but keep still anyway. We need to wait. Watch.”

He’d been warm, he’d been so warm it had been like drowning in heat, but now Kurt was cold and curled in on himself, and the deep night seemed suddenly inhospitable, the field too open and exposed. “Let’s go back to the house,” he whispered, and Blaine nodded and got to his feet, gathering up everything but the telescope, which Kurt separated from the tripod, tucking both under his arm.

Inside, with the lights flipped on and the door locked, getting spooked by an unidentified noise in a field at night seemed more than a little ridiculous, but Kurt didn’t care. Inside under real light he could see that Blaine looked awful—pale and drawn and ill, with terrible dark circles under his eyes. The last thing he needed to be doing was sitting outside in the cold.

“Blaine, you need to be in bed. Your bed,” he corrected hastily, feeling his cheeks grow hot. “You… forgive me saying so, but you look terrible.”

“I’ll be fine,” Blaine said brusquely, shaking his head. “I’ll take a nap later.”

“A nap?” Kurt scrutinized him. “Blaine, when was the last time you slept?”

Blaine’s mouth twisted a little. “Um… yesterday, when I missed all the fun with Mrs. Halleck. I think I slept enough then for a while.”

“Not when you’re sick, Blaine; you need to… wait. What did you do? What have you been up to?”

Blaine swallowed. It looked like it hurt. “Following Lyle.” Kurt’s mouth dropped open. “No, listen,” Blaine continued, before he could say anything. “After I got off the phone with you, I thought what if he… I needed to know what he was doing, so I went to his house to watch—but he’d been out, I saw him come back, all dressed in dark clothes, and I don’t know where he was. But… he’s up to something, Kurt, so I watched his house the rest of the night and then cut school and just… kept an eye on him, as best I could for the rest of the day and the afternoon, and once he went home for dinner and I saw him back in his house with his family I… I came to see you.”

“Blaine.” Kurt controlled his voice as best he could. Oh, he was his father’s son through and through, but he had unquestionably inherited his mother’s temper. “Blaine, you shouldn’t—you can’t do that; you’re sick, and it’s dangerous—”

“He’s dangerous to you,” Blaine interrupted, a faint flush breaking across his cheeks. “I don’t think… you don’t seem to take it, take him seriously, Kurt—I mean, yeah, your basement problem is taken care of, but Lyle is still around, he’s still… planning whatever it is that he’s planning, he’s still—”

“I can take care of myself,” Kurt said implacably. “Blaine, you wanted to help me, and you did—you did help me, so much, but… you need to stay out of this part of it. Stay away from Lyle.”

Blaine’s face crumpled a little. “He wants to hurt you, Kurt.”

Kurt drew himself up. “He’s going to hurt you first if he finds you stalking him.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Stop following Lyle, Blaine. Right now. I’ll handle him if… when I have to.”

Blaine shook his head. “What are you going to do?”

Whatever I have to. “That’s… it’s none of your business, Blaine. What you need to do is stay out of it, go home, and get some sleep.” He took a breath. “Go home, Blaine. Now.”

Blaine’s mouth was set as he turned away, but he stumbled a little walking to the door, and Kurt thought he might be crying. 

Kurt squeezed his fingers fiercely tight into his own upper arms to keep his hands where they were, pressed his lips together to keep in the words that crowded up in his throat—words of apology, entreaty, words that would let them find a way forward together—and schooled his face to deliberate stoicism in case Blaine looked back.

As far as he could tell, Blaine didn’t. When Blaine’s taillights vanished over the crest of the drive he unclamped his fingers and let out a ragged breath, flexing his hands slowly until he could feel them again.

***

The next morning, he had just taken his quiche out of the oven (swiss chard, mushroom, and gruyere—an experiment, but it smelled delicious, so he was hopeful) when Tess’ cruiser pulled up to the house. Kurt quickly sorted through excuses to use about his father’s absence that had not been worn absolutely threadbare, but the look on Tess’ face when he opened the door for her drove them right out of his head.

“Good morning, Kurt,” she said, taking off her hat as she stepped inside. “I wanted to let you know—Blaine is in the hospital, with pneumonia. They think he’s going to pull through,” she added quickly, apparently in response to the shock he knew must be evident on his face. “But it seems he’s been running around sick—his parents were having a hard time keeping track of him, and then early this morning they found him collapsed on the floor of his room and his breathing was… well, his lungs are full of fluid and they couldn’t wake him, so they took him to the hospital. He’s still out.”

His chest was numb. His face was numb. Underneath the numbness, it hurt. “They think… he’s going to be okay?” His voice sounded weak in his own ears. “You said that, right? That’s what you said—”

“That’s what I said,” Tess affirmed, and stepped close to him. “But Kurt, I need to know—I need you to tell me what the hell the two of you have been up to. I’m not talking about the weirdness with wherever your father is; I know there’s something going on there, but I’m not concerned with that right now—I’m talking about… whatever else the two of you have been doing. His parents have been worried sick and he won’t tell them anything, and I… well, I wasn’t so worried because I knew the two of you were… you’re friends, but now I need to know what’s been going on, because whatever it is, Blaine’s paying for it, and that’s not—”

Kurt didn’t remember sitting down, but there was a kitchen chair under him holding him up, so he supposed he must have. “I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “I haven’t… I’m sorry, Tess, there’s really nothing I can tell you. When I saw Blaine last night I just thought he had a bad cold, and I told him to go home and rest. I never—”

“Do you think you know something about what happened to Mrs. Halleck?” Tess asked abruptly, scrutinizing him. “Because I swear, if the two of you are trying to play Junior Detective…”

“No,” The word came out as a half-laugh, half-sob, and he swallowed, pulling himself together. “No, that’s… neither one of us knows anything, or wants to have anything to do with… with Mrs. Halleck or her son. Honestly.”

Tess sighed. Her eyes on him were sharp, but not unkind. “You can tell me, Kurt—really. Whatever it is, whatever the two of you have been up to, it’s okay. I mean—you can talk to me.”

Kurt pressed his lips together. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “I’m… there’s nothing.”

Tess slowly put her hat back on. She was frowning. “I’m going to go now, Kurt, but I want you to think carefully about everything I said. I know you don’t… I know you care about Blaine, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him, but… sometimes, keeping secrets can hurt someone, even if you don’t mean to.”

“I’m sorry.” It was the only thing he could think of to say. “I’m really sorry.”

“You and me both, Kurt,” Tess said, then turned and walked out, closing the door quietly behind her.

***

He sat at the kitchen table for an unknown stretch of time. The late morning sun coming through the windows made patterns on the floor; senseless patterns, obedient only to the will of the wind. He watched them for what seemed like a long time. When he realized he was rubbing his chest over and over, right in the middle, right where it ached, he made himself stop.

The sudden sound of the front door opening made him jump—there had been no car—and when Lyle Halleck strolled casually into the house and sat down at the kitchen table across from him, Kurt sat up straight, curling both his hands into fists.

“Well, that sure smells wonderful,” Lyle said with hearty bonhomie, rubbing his hands together briskly before folding his arms on the table and leaning forward. “Since your little pal is doing a stint in Black Rock Bay General, I suppose you must have made it for me. What is it, quiche?”

“Get out,” Kurt said softly. He could hear the menace in his own voice.

“You know, I don’t think I will. Not yet.” Lyle nodded towards the front door. “I saw Officer Snoops leave; I don’t think she’ll be coming back right away, especially now that I learned the trick of parking down on the wood road and walking up here—so many busybodies in this town. Tsk.” He shook his head. “Of course, there seems to be one less, now that you’ve… what exactly did you do to my mother?”

Kurt pressed his lips together. “I didn’t do anything to your mother.”

Lyle tilted his head, as if he didn’t quite understand the words. “You let that boy touch you.”

Kurt said nothing.

Lyle laced his fingers together casually. “Exactly how far did he get?”

Horribly, Kurt felt his eyes start to sting. “Leave Blaine alone.”

Lyle grinned. “Well, okay—there’s only one good way to make sure that happens. You know that, right?”

Kurt’s phone, sitting by his right hand on the kitchen table, rang. He glanced at the screen and let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He picked up the phone and answered it. “Hey, Officer Thibodeau.”

Lyle stood up, still grinning, then shook his head and left the house. Kurt jumped up from the table and locked the front door, then finally tried to make sense of Tess’ soft voice in his ear. “I’m sorry—could you repeat that?”

“Look, I just wanted to let you know—Blaine woke up. It looks like he’s going to be okay. His parents are with him now.” She paused, and cleared her throat. “He’s in room thirty-seven, on the first floor. I thought you would want to know.”

His eyes blurred, and when he closed them, hot tears rolled down his cheeks. “I… yes. Thank you. I’ll just… thank you for letting me know.” He hung up.

Kurt sat back down at the kitchen table. His eyes were once again fixed on the sunshine patterns on the floor, but he saw nothing. He saw nothing at all.

***

The General Hospital wasn’t much of one; a small two-story structure away from the main street of town, not far from the high school. Kurt parked his bike behind the building, in a lot that seemed to be intended for employees, and made use of his well-honed ‘I know where I’m going so I belong here’ skills to go through the back entrance. He’d waited until late afternoon, hoping that the hospital might be less crowded, the evening staff perhaps less numerous, and that seemed to have been a sound decision. Nobody stopped him; nobody even looked at him twice. 

It took him a few minutes to find his way past what appeared to be several labs, private exam rooms, and a room littered with small tables and a suspended television, but eventually he reached numbered rooms that, when he looked inside, held patients in screened hospital beds. Number thirty-seven held two beds, but the one closest to the door was empty. The lights in the room were off, the blinds closed, but there was enough muted sun coming in around the edges of the window for him to see the second bed, and the still form lying in it.

The door swung open at his touch. He heard Blaine before he saw him, his breathing clearly audible, rattling and labored. In the low light Blaine looked terribly frail, thin and wan in the utilitarian hospital bed. Kurt didn’t realize he was crying until he saw two drops fall onto the pale hand he held in his own, and he used his free hand to wipe the tears away savagely, sniffing. When Blaine’s eyes opened, they were hazy and unfocused, his thick lashes matted.

“Kurt?” Barely a whisper, but Blaine’s fingers twitched around his. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Kurt said softly. “So I guess you’re really kind of spectacularly bad at taking care of yourself, huh?”

Blaine made a low rumble in his chest, not quite a chuckle. “Looks like it.” His thumb brushed Kurt’s knuckles. “Are you okay?”

Kurt’s mouth twitched. “Seeing as I’m not the one of us currently hospitalized, why, yes, Blaine. I’m just fine.”

Blaine’s eyes drooped. “It’s… so good to see you,” he said slowly, resisting a yawn. “Sorry. Still so tired.”

Kurt snagged one of Blaine’s guest chairs, and sat down without relinquishing Blaine’s hand. “Go back to sleep,” he said quietly. “I’ll be right here.”

Blaine mumbled something (it sounded bizarrely like ‘cell phone’, but Kurt wasn’t taking bets), and squeezed his hand gently. Kurt squeezed back, and listened to Blaine’s rough breathing slowly settle into a more regular rhythm. He sat and held Blaine’s hand until all traces of daylight were gone from the window, until Blaine was just a dark shape barely visible against the white pillow. When he heard sounds from the next room that sounded like hospital personnel making rounds, he placed Blaine’s hand carefully back on the coverlet, kissed his cool cheek, and crept quietly out of the room.

***

The air was icy on the ride home, but his brain was racing hot: calculations and suppositions and possibilities and careful gauging of risks. He pedaled so fast he got a stitch in his side, and he pushed on grimly through it, using the pain to help him focus. Pain, rage, fury: he needed to use all these things, needed to know intimately how to make use of them, because they were part of the landscape, and he had to be able to make them an asset rather than a liability.

The house was cold and dark when he returned, and he moved through his tasks with a kind of metronomic practicality. He put his bike away, ate a slice of cold quiche standing over the sink, washed and dried and put away his few dishes, closed and locked the house and drew the curtains on all the windows, then took a shower and went to bed, allowing his brain to race away until consciousness dwindled like a last bright speck in a field of blackness, until his heavy, heated eyes finally slipped shut.

When his eyes opened hours later on pitch-blackness his breath caught in his throat, his ears attuned for whatever it was that woken him. A creak. Not the kind of settling-house creak that he was used to, but a creak from inside the house. From the stairs. Kurt sat up in bed, and a moment later there was light—faint, but undeniable, coming through his open bedroom door. Someone had turned the lights on downstairs; someone who wasn’t attempting any degree of stealth whatsoever.

Kurt got up, found his dressing gown and slipped it on over his pyjamas, and shook his tangled hair back out of his eyes as he belted it shut. His heart was beating just a little too fast, but he stood in the dim coolness of his bedroom and breathed until he was steady, until he was calm.

Then he went downstairs.

***

Lyle had built a fire; he was tending it when Kurt came down the stairs. “I love a fire on cold nights,” Lyle said cheerfully, poker in hand. He was wearing a black turtleneck and black trousers, his blond hair invisible under a black beanie cap. “Cozy. Domestic bliss. Don’t you agree?”

Kurt said nothing.

Lyle put the poker back in the rack and made himself at home on the couch, crossing one of his legs over the other. “You see, Kurt, the silent treatment really isn’t an option any longer. You forgot to lock one of the back windows when you snuck off to see your pal at the hospital, and I had plenty of time for a look around.” He dug in his pocket and held out his open palm to display two small items. “One of my mother’s hairpins, from under the stairs in your cellar—not damning evidence, perhaps, but enough for me. But this—” he touched the other object, “this is one of her fingernails; I’d know that nail polish color anywhere.” He grinned softly, shaking his head a little. “I ought to, I had to stand there and be the dutiful son during far too many of her manicures.” He held up the fingernail, turning it back and forth in the light. “It was between two stones in the cellar beside the stairs; hard to spot, I’m not surprised that you missed it. I take it she fell?”

Kurt swallowed. “Yes.” His voice was creaky.

Lyle looked at him, his eyes bright. “Did you push her?”

“No.”

Lyle gave him a coy smile. “Honestly, I wouldn’t care if you had—or blame you. She was a horrible woman, she made things very inconvenient for me.” He sighed, and dumped his two found prizes onto the coffee table in front of him. “When I got married, she gave me fifty percent of everything—the businesses, the properties—so I don’t even have to wait for her to be declared dead to start living the life I want.” He regarded Kurt calmly. “Let’s talk about that, Kurt—the life I want.”

Kurt felt his palms curl into fists, and forced them open. “All right.” He took a step towards the kitchen. “Would you like some tea?”

Lloyd chuckled. “I have to say, Kurt, I just love this domestic streak of yours—it’s like world war three could break out, and you’d still be bustling around the kitchen, seeing to the needs of your man—some kind of biological imperative for you, I guess. Sure, tea; count me in.”

Kurt filled the kettle at the tap, moving slowly. “Stop,” Lyle said, and Kurt froze, craning over his shoulder. “Ditch the robe—it has pockets.”

Kurt put the kettle down, turned, unbelted and removed his robe, and tossed it over to Lyle when he extended a hand for it. Lyle checked the pockets and the sleeves, smiling when he found nothing. “I hope you’ll excuse this little precaution,” he said wryly. “I really do want us to learn to get along—I just know all too well what a little spitfire you can be when you’re roused.” He shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong; I like it—I like it plenty.” He leaned forward, resting his chin on his fist. “Did you murder your father?”

“No.”

“Your mother?”

“No.”

Lyle raised his eyebrows. “We’ll come back to that later, maybe.” He nodded. “Carry on.”

Kurt set out a tray, cups, and spoons on the counter. “Would you like cookies?” He turned to Lyle. “Almond cookies. I made them myself.”

Lyle laughed, delighted. “By all means—cookies.”

Kurt went to the pantry for the cookie jar. “Would you please add some wood to the fire? It’s quite cold in here.”

“Lyle.”

Kurt turned to him. “What?”

Lyle uncrossed his legs. “Use my name. Say my name.”

“Lyle, would you please add some wood to the fire?”

Lyle’s smile was a slow, revolting thing. “Sure. No problem.” Kurt could see Lyle watching him from the corner of his eye as he tended the fire. He made no sudden movements.

When the tray was ready, he lifted it from the counter. “Would you like to sit at the kitchen table? Or—”

“Oh, I think it would be much nicer here,” Lyle said, patting the couch next to him. “Warmer, too—closer to the fire.”

Kurt set the tray carefully on the coffee table, and sat down on the other end of the couch. Lyle gave him a mock-frown. “So far away from me?”

Kurt let his eyes drop. “For now, yes.” He leaned forward to pick up his tea, then settled back.

Lyle picked up a cookie and bit into it, chewing meditatively. “These are quite good, Kurt.” He swallowed, then looked back at Kurt. “How far did that boy get with you?”

Kurt lowered his cup and saucer to his lap. “We kissed. Twice.”

Lyle broke into a grin, leaning towards Kurt as if they were sharing secrets. “Really? That’s it?” Kurt nodded. “Oh my God, he’s an even bigger idiot than I thought.” Lyle chuckled, shaking his head, then reached out and carefully lifted the cup and saucer from Kurt’s lap, taking it for himself. Lyle took the cup and saucer left on the tray and handed it to Kurt. “There,” he said in a tone of satisfaction, with a nod and a wink. “Not that I don’t trust you, Kurt, it’s just—how about you drink that?”

Kurt lifted the cup Lyle had handed him and took a sip. When he put the cup back on the saucer, it didn’t rattle at all.

“Well that’s just fine,” Lyle said, and lifted his own cup to Kurt in a silent toast. Before he could drink, both of them turned towards the door at the sound of a car pulling up the drive.

“Are you expecting somebody?” Lyle asked sharply. Kurt shook his head.

Kurt put his cup down and got to his feet. Lyle was staring at the front door, and didn’t notice when Kurt scooped up the fingernail and hairpin that were sitting on the coffee table and threw them into the hottest part of the fire. Then he went to the window and pulled the curtain aside for a peek. “It’s Tess—Officer Thibodeau—with another officer.”

“I’m your welcome guest,” Lyle said harshly, tugging his cap off. He had red spots high on his cheeks. “You invited me here and I am welcome—you understand?”

“Of course,” Kurt said, and slipped his robe back on before he went to the door. He opened it at the first knock.

Tess’ face was white, her mouth set in a stern line. “I need to speak with Mr. Halleck,” she said, her eyes fixed on him over Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt pulled the door open, and let her and the other officer in. “Lyle Halleck,” she said, pulling a pair of handcuffs from her belt. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Marjorie Halleck. Her body was found buried in your back yard—”

“What?” Lyle demanded.

“What?” Kurt said.

Tess ignored both of them, pushing Lyle face-forward against the wall and cuffing his hands behind him. “And I’m no medical examiner, but it’s quite clear from the blow to her head and her broken neck that she died by violence. So you have the right to remain silent—”

Kurt sank down on the couch while Tess read Lyle his rights, his once-disciplined heart now going at an unstoppable wild gallop. Lyle voiced objections, then vague threats, then specific threats throughout the process, until his eyes found Kurt when Tess turned him around.

“You—Officer, it’s him—he killed my mother, I know he did; he’s—”

“Mr. Halleck,” Tess interrupted. “I received an e-mail this evening, sent from your own iPhone. In addition to the location where your mother’s body could be found, the e-mail contained several photo attachments, surveillance photos you had taken of this young man, many of them through the windows of this house, many of them nudes—”

“I didn’t send you any e-mail,” Lyle screeched.

Tess shook him by the neck a little. “Did you take the photos?” Lyle closed his mouth with a snap. Tess nodded. “We’ll go through your home and work computers, of course—I can only imagine what you’ve got stashed there. Funny, though: your wife didn’t seem to give us much argument about it. Of course she denied sending us the e-mail, but you can’t really blame her for that. Guess you should have been tending the home fires a little more, huh?”

Tess handed Lyle over to the other officer, who walked him outside. Kurt’s mouth hung open, one hand pressed over his chest. Tess came over to him, and put both hands on his shoulders. “You okay, Kurt?”

“I…” he wasn’t ready, he was not remotely ready for this, he had been ready for anything and everything, but he was not ready for this. He swallowed. “You found Mrs. Halleck’s body?”

“In his back yard, yes, right where the e-mail said it would be, between the house and the bushes. The earth was still soft—she’d only been there a little while.” Tess was frowning at him. “Did he hurt you?”

“What? No, he… he thought… if he promised to leave Blaine alone, that I would, um—”

Tess nodded. “He’s a piece of work, all right. No wonder his wife had enough of it.”

“You think she sent you the e-mail?”

“Well, it was someone close to him, with access to his phone, and both his girls are too young. Yeah, I think it was her.” 

Kurt blinked. His tongue felt numb in his mouth. “How did you know he was here?”

“We sent a unit out to try to find him as soon as we found the body—his Escalade was spotted on the woods road across the way; it wasn’t much of a stretch to guess where he was going from there.” Tess shrugged. “I came to collect him myself because, well, honestly—I just really wanted the satisfaction.”

“I… get that.”

She patted him on the back. “Well, you won’t have to worry about him for quite a while; I don’t care how many good lawyers he can afford.” She looked into his face again. “You’re sure you’re okay?” Kurt nodded. She smiled faintly. “Okay. Good. Hey—you should drink your tea before it gets cold. It looks like you could use it.”

***

Four days later, he was sweeping the porch when Tess came up the drive in her cruiser. Kurt put his broom aside, shading his eyes against the glare of the late-afternoon sun as she got out of the car. “Officer,” he said quietly.

Tess took off her sunglasses as she came up on the porch, tucking them into her breast pocket. “You know, I think you can call me Tess, at this point.”

“Tess, then.” Kurt acknowledged. “Would you like some tea?”

Tess adjusted her hat, then looked at her watch. “I… sure, I’ve got time for tea, I think.” She switched her gaze to him, one corner of her mouth turned up. “Got any cookies?”

Kurt returned the smile and held the door open for her. “Brown butter shortbreads, made them this morning.” He waved her to a seat at the kitchen table, and started filling the kettle. He waited for her to say something—anything—to explain why she was there, but she just watched him as he worked, quiet until he was seated on the other side of the table, tea and cookies in between them.

“Thank you, Kurt; these are amazing.” She finished a cookie, wiping her fingers on her napkin, and then looked at him, her face grave. “There’s something I need to tell you. About Lyle.”

Kurt very slowly put his teacup down. “Is he out? Did he get bail?”

“No.” Tess laced her fingers together on the table, leaning forward. “He’s dead.”

Kurt blinked. “Dead?”

“Yeah.” Tess looked away from him, down at her hands. “We’re not really equipped at the station here in town to handle long-term detention, so three days ago I transferred him to the County lockup. This morning he was found dead in the shower room—he’d been stabbed.” She looked up, her face calm. “His arrest, the charges—it’s been on the news, and they don’t think much of child molesters in prison.”

“Dead.” Kurt repeated. He picked up his cup, then put it down again. “So… what happens now?”

Tess rested her elbows on the table, leaning her chin on her fist. “Now? Now I do paperwork. And hopefully the young male population of Black Rock Bay can sleep a little better.” She shrugged. “It’s doubtful that we’re going to find anyone to prosecute for Lyle’s murder, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It wasn’t.” She met his eyes with equanimity, and apparently no expectation that he express any sadness over Lyle’s death. “How about Mrs. Halleck?”

Tess shrugged. “Officially unsolved since he was charged but not tried, but there’ll be no further investigation. No need.” She took another cookie. “Anyway, I thought I’d let you know about Lyle before you heard it on the news. I thought it might be a weight off your mind.”

“It is,” Kurt said meditatively, sipping his tea. “Absolutely. Thank you for letting me know.”

“You’re welcome—thank you for the tea and incredible cookies.” She chewed for a while, eyeing him speculatively, a faint trace of a smile on her face. “You know, Blaine’s supposed to get out of the hospital tomorrow.” Kurt said nothing. Tess tilted her head. “The last time I went to see him, I asked him if you’d been in to visit lately. He just got quiet on me and then changed the subject.” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?”

Kurt regarded her silently for a few moments, then reached out and lifted the teapot. “More tea?”

Tess snorted derisively. “Oh my God.”

***

The cold weather broke two days later, and suddenly it was clear and windless and practically balmy, still enough that Kurt could hear the ocean through the open windows of the house. He had just finished drying his dinner dishes when he heard a car coming up the drive, and he found himself caught between bemusement and dismay when he realized that he now recognized the sound of Blaine’s engine.

He had the front door open before Blaine came up to the porch. Blaine was too thin and too pale, but the shadows under his eyes were gone, and he seemed to be breathing without difficulty, although his steps were slow as he entered the house. Kurt closed and locked the door behind him, then leaned against the kitchen counter and finished drying his hands, watching Blaine, who was watching him.

“Hi,” Blaine said softly.

“Hi.”

A faint, pink tinge appeared in Blaine’s cheeks. “If you’re going to yell at me, could you please maybe do it and get it over with?”

Kurt took a breath, then shook his head. “I’m not going to yell at you, Blaine.”

Blaine’s eyes widened. “You’re not?”

Kurt straightened his shoulders. “No. I try not to invest time or energy in pointless ventures. It’s one way I maximize my efficiency.”

“I see.” Blaine looked down, then up at him with a dry half-smile. “You’re… kind of terrifying, you know that?”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Really? Terrifying? This from a man who, while half-dead himself, dug up a corpse in my back yard and then buried it in another guy’s back yard to frame him for murder?”

Blaine pressed his lips together, nodding. “Yeah, that was… quite a night. What I can remember of it.”

Kurt tilted his head. “The e-mail? Lyle’s cell phone?”

Blaine shrugged. “That was just… luck. I finished burying Mrs. Halleck and I still didn’t know how I was going to make sure they found her, but Lyle had left the back door of his house unlocked and his phone was just sitting there in the kitchen on the charger and I just… went for it.” Blaine took a breath. “I set up the e-mail for delayed send, because I didn’t want them digging her up right away. Then I found those awful photos and attached them, and… that was it. I ditched your tarp in a dumpster downtown before I went home.” Kurt said nothing, and Blaine went on, rushing his words a little. “I kept my gloves on the whole time,” he said earnestly, “I mean, I didn’t do anything stupid—well, unless you count the whole passing out from lack of oxygen thing at the end of it.”

Kurt bit his lip. “I see.”

There was a pause. Blaine opened his mouth, closed it, then spoke, very quietly. “You were planning to kill him, weren’t you?”

Kurt hesitated a moment, then answered. “Yes. If your aunt had been ten minutes later getting here, she would have found me hauling his dead body down to the cellar.”

Blaine blinked. “How?”

“Cyanide tea and almond cookies. He was about to drink it when Tess showed up.”

Blaine’s eyebrows drew down. “I… huh. Actually, I’m surprised he fell for that.”

Kurt shook his head. “He didn’t. He was… wary with me. So I took the dosed cup myself, and waited for him to switch cups on me.”

“Oh my god.” Blaine covered his face with his hands for a moment, then let them fall. “Kurt—” His voice was sharp, caught between shock and rage.

Kurt’s back stiffened. “What? Are you planning to yell at me, Blaine? Does that seem like a profitable investment of your time and energy?”

“Kurt, you could have died—”

“Hey, you almost did die—”

“But I just wanted to help—”

“By risking being locked up or… or snuffed out by a sadistic pedophile, or almost killing yourself? I don’t need that kind of help, Blaine.”

The pink spots were back in Blaine’s cheeks. “Oh, no—you don’t need any help at all, because you can just take care of yourself. You can handle anything—”

Kurt curled his hands into fists. “Well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Blaine, but yes, I can.”

“You know what I’ve noticed? I’ve noticed that you’re a total jerk, that’s what I’ve noticed.”

The fire low in Kurt’s belly, that only moments ago seemed like a conflagration that might burn down the world, sputtered and died. He tried—and failed—to stop himself from grinning. “Honestly—that’s your ne plus ultra of insults, Blaine Anderson? That I’m a jerk?”

Blaine shook his head, opened his mouth, closed it, and then his face crumpled all at once, affording Kurt a single glimpse of abject misery before Blaine hid his face in his hands. His shoulders shook and he made sounds—words, Kurt thought, but he couldn’t tell for sure. He walked closer slowly, reaching out without knowing he meant to, and then swayed when Blaine latched onto him fiercely, his hot face pressed against the curve of Kurt’s neck. “I was so scared,” Blaine said brokenly, arms like iron around his ribs, desperately tight. “I was so scared that he was going to hurt you, that I wouldn’t be able to stop him from hurting you, and I just… I had to do something, Kurt, I couldn’t just let it, let him—I couldn’t let it happen—”

There was more, but Kurt couldn’t make any sense of it. He closed his eyes and held on while his anger and outrage leached away, while every reserve and remonstrance and resistance that he’d counted on to keep Blaine at a distance vanished like thin sand on sea-washed rock, leaving him shaken, leaving no room in him for anything but honesty.

“I missed you,” he whispered, and it was barely audible but Blaine nodded against his neck and murmured something unintelligible to his collarbone, and Kurt just stood and held on, his suddenly ungovernable heart going at a gallop.

When he finally pulled back Blaine let go, wiping his face roughly with his forearms, but Kurt reached out before Blaine could turn away, cupping his tear-blurred face gently in both hands. “Blaine.” His voice sounded low and a little hoarse, as if he had been the one crying. “Come upstairs with me? Please?”

Blaine took his hands and held them in his own, pressing them against his chest. “Yes,” he answered, and his eyes with their wet-matted lashes seemed to hold all the light in the room. “God, yes.”

***

Outside his bedroom golden light was giving way to dusky lavender, and the air through the open windows was warm and salt-perfumed. Inside seemed like an oasis, a quiet place far removed from the world and time, space for the two of them, a space apart. Blaine face-to-face with him in the softness of his bed was a revelation: not an interloper or even a guest, but a welcome home to where he belonged.

He kissed Blaine first, softly, almost an apology; a soothing, a comfort—but when he opened his mouth Blaine’s breath caught in his throat and Kurt shivered, Blaine’s desire as palpable as hot sunshine on bare skin. So warm. He was so warm. He rolled on top of Blaine already sweating, kissing him deeply and sinking, straddling Blaine’s hips and the hardness there, rubbing himself against it in a way that seemed somehow innocent and desperately erotic at the same time.

It was a strange contrast, feeling shyness but no shame—strange, but wonderful. Kurt sat up and stripped off all of his shirts at once, his skin hot-cold and tingling with exposure until Blaine put warm, strong hands on him, making him moan, then blush. Below him, Blaine’s eyes were heavy-lidded, his mouth slightly open, his face flushed. Kurt sank to kiss him again, letting his thighs spread, shivering when his bare nipples scraped against Blaine’s shirt. Blaine’s hands cupped his waist, then slid to his lower back and Kurt felt a feather-light flutter at his core when he almost came, locking his hips until the danger had passed.

“You can,” Blaine breathed against his wet, sensitive mouth, a secret told, trembling and intimate. “Kurt, please—”

Kurt pressed one more kiss to Blaine’s mouth and then kneeled up, dropping his hands to his belt. “Soon,” he promised, feeling more naked than naked with Blaine touching his denim-covered thighs and Blaine’s wide, dark eyes so open and hot and needful. He undid his jeans button, zipper, then took one of Blaine’s warm hands and pressed it to his hard cock, gasping as Blaine gasped.

The world swung around as Blaine rolled on top of him, kissing him with a ferocity Kurt felt down to his toes before pulling back, panting softly and working Kurt out of his clothes. Kurt stretched out into the soft sheets, exposed and vulnerable and yet fearless, wanting Blaine’s hands on him everywhere. When his last stitch of clothing hit the floor Blaine hung suspended over him, reverent and careful, and Kurt was tempted to yank him down but shivered instead, his breath high and quick in his throat, waiting. Blaine kissed him and cupped his balls softly at the same moment, and Kurt cried out a little and then wrapped around Blaine like a clinging vine, Blaine hard and hot under his clothes, maddeningly and tantalizingly scratchy against his softness.

With Blaine’s bare hand on his cock and Blaine’s tongue in his mouth, something inside Kurt struggled to break free, to be known. He didn’t resist, but sank deeper into the thrumming, deep comfort of Blaine’s desire and just let himself go over the edge, coming in Blaine’s grip with a shudder and a gasp, hot streaks up his own chest as far as his throat as he rode the exquisite edge of pleasure, arching into Blaine’s hand until he couldn’t take any more.

There was a long, slow, quiet time after that, endless kisses and closeness, Blaine’s face as tender as an open wound. “You are amazing,” Blaine whispered to him, pulling back from his mouth, tracing Kurt’s lower lip with his thumb.

“I’m amazing,” Kurt breathed, with only the faintest trace of a smile. He let his eyelids drift lower. “Blaine. Take your clothes off.”

Blaine did so, slowly, holding his gaze the entire time, and perhaps could have passed as unselfconscious except for the deep flush that spread from his cheeks to halfway down his chest. Blaine seemed somehow younger and more boyish out of his clothes, strong and compact with gorgeous cream-gold skin, with his hair mussed and his lightly-furred limbs at slightly awkward angles. Kurt stared at the line of hair that ran from Blaine’s navel down to his dark-flushed erection and had to close his eyes, dizzy.

He found Blaine with his hands, with the tip of his nose and with his lips, breathing deeply. The scrubbed-clean, warm, faintly coppery smell of Blaine’s skin mixed with the salt air, and Kurt’s mouth watered. Fitting their naked bodies together was so easy—his lips to Blaine’s neck, arms and legs tangled, a choked sound from Blaine and soft moan from himself when their cocks pressed against each other. Then he had Blaine’s hips in his hands, fingers curved around and sinking deep into the lush cushion of Blaine’s ass, and he was rocking and couldn’t stop, it felt too good. Blaine’s arms slipped around his neck and the next kiss was ravenous, he moved and Blaine moved and then Kurt was on his back again with Blaine on top of him, his spine arching so hard it hurt.

“Stop—I’ll come if you don’t stop,” he managed hoarsely, and Blaine drew a breath and went still, except for a faint tremor. “You… oh. Blaine. Fuck me—” It wasn’t what he’d planned to say or what he’d planned to do, but the moment he said it he felt the truth of it like a burn deep to the bone: that was what he needed, what he wanted, what his heart and his aching, desperate body had to have.

There was no shame in him for saying it, no shame in what he wanted, but he was oddly embarrassed opening his night table drawer and handing over his lube. He saw Blaine’s hand shaking when he took the bottle, and somehow that made it okay. Kurt eased back into the pillows and took a deep breath, letting his legs spread open with wanton abandon. He was panting, then moaning softly, before Blaine even touched him. Blaine’s hands were so strong, warm and reassuring despite their trembling, and Kurt kept his eyes closed, bit his lip and reached up with one hand to grab his headboard while keeping the other buried in Blaine’s sweat-soft hair.

His body opened so easily, fitting itself around Blaine’s fingers with no pain other than a deepening ache, something unlocked at the base of his spine that freed his hips to move in a way he hadn’t known they could, and from what seemed like very far away he heard Blaine groaning, half-muffled and hoarse. He was so close to coming, so close to stretching his legs out and tightening his grip on Blaine’s hair and letting his hips do what they needed to do to get him there, but there was a keen sweetness to the torture of holding off, some kind of power in it, in him and Blaine together, needing so much.

He tugged Blaine up when he couldn’t stand any more, locking his sweat-slick thighs around Blaine’s sweat-slick waist. Blaine came up hard against him and then stopped, but there was no question that there had been enough stopping so Kurt took over, one arm around Blaine’s neck and his other hand on Blaine’s ass to keep him there while Kurt took what he needed, working his hips slowly while he kissed Blaine’s open, groaning mouth.

Kurt shivered when he stopped, full and brimming and the entirety of him buzzing with raw nerves firing crazily, throat and nipples and cock and balls and oh, oh, oh his ass, and that was it, that was as much as he could do, he was too overwhelmed and too close to the edge to do more. “Blaine, please—” His head arched back hard into the pillows when Blaine thrust into him, and then all he had to do was hold on and take it, Blaine’s mouth ravishing his between groans while Blaine fucked him hard.

He was on the edge with nothing more to reach for so he watched Blaine instead, Blaine’s beautiful face exalted with something that looked like transcendent pain, the blissful agony of a martyred saint. Blaine inside him, moving in him, was an exquisite, terrifying intimacy, and he lifted his hands to cup Blaine’s face as he had at the beginning, keeping Blaine with him, eyes on his and purely with him, searing the both of them with something they would never be able to revoke or deny. It was a final breach, a last wall knocked down, obliterated, and destroyed, and he would never be the same. He exulted in the nakedness of having nowhere left to hide, reveled in Blaine’s pleasure and pain, and held on, and when Blaine gasped his name and came inside him he let go, let himself come with a soft, high wail, and felt so amazingly, incredibly alive.

***

It had gotten dark. He didn’t remember it happening but the proof was right outside his window, wide fields and a few trees faintly illuminated by a high moon and a brilliant field of stars. He’d gotten up to shut the window when the stirring breeze had come in cool, not wanting Blaine to catch a chill, but he was arrested by the realization that it was dark, it was night, they’d been in his room for hours. He slid the pane down and then stayed there, naked, the windowsill cool under his hands. His entire body was still gently thrumming.

He didn’t hear Blaine leave the bed but suddenly there were hands on his waist and a warm length all down his back, Blaine’s arms coming around him and holding him close. Kurt looked over his shoulder, and in the silver moonlight Blaine might have been a young satyr, gorgeously ethereal and mischievous. Kurt smiled. “You should get under the covers and stay warm, Blaine. The night’s cooled off.”

“I’m fine,” Blaine said, and kissed his cheek softly. Kurt turned back and they both looked out the window at the night on the cliff-top, and Kurt smiled a little when he realized they were swaying together gently, just a little. Blaine’s hand slid up to his chest, pressing there. “I’m terribly in love with you.” It was a quiet, calm admission, but Kurt felt the truth of it quiver like a plucked string deep at his core. He smiled helplessly, and dropped his head forward when he closed his stinging eyes.

“Good,” he said softly, putting his own hand over Blaine’s and pressing it harder to his heart. “Glad to know I’m not alone.”

A soft kiss brushed the top knob of his spine, and Kurt shivered. Blaine’s whisper stirred the hair at the nape of his neck. “No. You’re not alone.”

Kurt pulled Blaine’s arms more firmly around him, then lifted his head, opened his eyes, and, childlike, wished upon all the brilliant stars in the infinite sky.

~End

**Author's Note:**

> I love dark fairytales. I took tremendous liberties with this one (The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, by Laird Koenig), but that is part of the pleasure and privilege of creation (or imitation), so there you go. I was particularly drawn to this story because it explores a theme I resonate with, one I seem to continually return to: the burden of self-sufficiency at an early age, before the world is ready to grant you the agency to go along with it. This is just another nod to my fellow travelers on that particular stretch of strange road.
> 
> I think this might be the most grown-up thing I’ve ever written. I’ve had a serious talk with myself about it, and after grilling myself mercilessly about accountability and my intentions, I’ve decided I’m okay with that.
> 
> This story is dedicated to Sam, Lisha, Lex H., Whis, and Alice, with great and fervent love.


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